
Class. 
Boot. 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



NOTES ON INGERSOLL 



t^ 



Rev. L. A. LAMBERT, 



OF WATERLOO, N.'Y. 






JPIREZFA-aiE 



Rev. PATRICK CRONIN. 



Il 



'^OFV 



BUFFALO, N. Y.: 
BUFFALO CATHOLIC PUBLICATION COMPANY. 



-v^ 



Copyright, 1883. 
Buffalo Catholic Publication Co. 

AH Rights Reserved. 



PREFACE. 

THESE " Notes on Ingersoll," by the Eeverend Louis 
A. Lambert, of Waterloo, New York, have already 
appeared in the columns of the Buffalo Union and Times, 
much to the delight of readers of that journal ; they have 
also have extensive] y copied and commented upon by the 
Catholic press throughout the country. They are, unques- 
tionably, the most crushing reply yet made to that noto- 
rious little fraud — Ingersoll — who so loves to pose as a 
profoundly original thinker ; and who lives, moves, and 
has his being, in the laughter and applause which his fes- 
cennine buffoonery provokes. Regarding them as a com- 
plete annihilation of the pretentious scoffer, and desirous 
that they should reach a much larger public than could 
be secured by any newspaper, however widely circulated, 
the present writer pointed out to the author the advisa- 
bility of having just such writings as the "Notes" spread 
broadcast in the interest of Eeligion, especially at this 
time ; and earnestly urged their publication in the pre- 
sent form. 

Would that those whose minds have been poisoned by 
the specious pen and brilliant rhetoric of our American 
arch-blasphemer could read these " Notes" ! They would 
then see how untruthful in statement, illogical in reason- 
ing, dishonest in inference, vile in inuendo, and malevo- 
lent in purpose, is the man upon whose every utterance 
they hung with delight. With cold, relentless cruelty, 
Father Lambert pursues Ingersoll in these pages, step by 
step, piercing him with keen Damascus blade at every 
turn ; — aye, dissecting him to the very marrow of his 
bones — and then holds him up, like another unmasked 
Mokanna, to the contempt and scorn of mankind. 

Herein, too, is shown that this profoundly original 
thinker is the veriest of plagiarists, palming off, as his 



own, the worn-out objections of the infidels of other 
days, which have been answered hundreds of times. Yea, 
verily, this valiant knight of the theological tournament 
is nothing but a fraudulent peddler of old infidel junk. 
He pretends to bring to the polemical market jewels rich 
and rare, but they are only well-worn paste, which, even 
when new, were worthless. 

Oh ! that we had to-day more Father Lamberts, es- 
pecially in these United States, to give ns opportune pam- 
phlets like this ; and thus make short work of the blat- 
ant revilers of all revealed truth, who, like a reptile 
brood, hiss forth their venom against Christ and His 
Church. Liberty, honor, heroism, self-sacrifice, and sim- 
ilar high-sounding phrases, are continually on the lips of 
these sophists ; whilst they would fain persuade the 
world that the Christian religion is something that 
enslaves and degrades. But there is no slavery so gall- 
ing as the slavery of unbelief. It is the truth thai makes 
us free. Neither is there intolerance like unto the intol- 
erance of Infidelity. And as for honor, self-sacrifice, 
heroism, and those other natural virtues that ennoble 
human nature — destroy the belief in a Hereafter, deny 
future rewards and punishments — and how long will they 
flourish? Infidelity knows no standard of Right and 
Wrong ; and such standard is the corner-stone upon 
which society rests. 

As may be observed, these " Notes'' are written from the 
broadest Christian standpoint ; so that they ought to lie as 
welcome to all who believe in Jesus Christ and in the 
revelation He has made, as to Catholics. We need 
scarce add the hope that they may have a large circula- 
tion ; and we ask all who glory in the triumph of Chris- 
tian truth to aid in spreading this pamphlet. 

Patrick ckonin. 

Office of the Catholic Union and Timks, i 
Buffalo. N. Y., January 5th, 1883. \ 



NOTES ON INGERSOLL 



INTRODUCTORY. 
rpHE North American Review for August, 1881, pub- 
-*- lislied an article on the Christian Religion, by Robert 
Gr. Ingersoll, together with a reply to it by Jeremiah SL 
Black, of Washington city. In the Xovember number 
of the same Review, Mr. Ingersoll replied to Black's 
defence, and there the controversy came to an abrupt 
end. 

This sudden termination of the debate caused no little 
surprise. Mr. IngersolFs admirers rejoiced at what they 
considered Black's defeat, and those Christians who took 
an interest in this passage-at-arms between the two law- 
yers were disappointed at Mr. Black's silence. They began 
to. think that he had entered into a field of action for 
which he was not well equipped by education and mental 
structure. They were not, however, left long in doubt 
as to the reason of his silence. This reason he gives in 
a letter addressed to the American Christian. Review, a 
weekly religious paper published in Cincinnati. 

"From the beginning,'' says Mr. Black, "it was dis- 
tinctly understood that my defence was to be published 
with the accusation. * . * * At the time of the pub- 



*Z NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

lication I agreed that if Mr. Ingersoll had any fault to 
find with the result it might seem cowardly to refuse him 
another chance on the same terms. I was not afraid of 
any new assault he might make, if he was not afraid of 
my defence. 

" Three months afterwards fifty pages of the foulest 
and falsest libel that ever was written against God or 
man, was sent to me. I was entirely willing to treat it as 
I had treated the other ; that is, give it the answer I 
thought it deserved, and let both go together. But it 
came when I was disabled by an injury from which I 
could not hope to get well for some weeks, and I so notified 
the editor. To my surprise I was informed that no con- 
tradiction, correction or criticism of mine or anybody 
else would be allowed to accompany this new effusion of 
filth. It was to be printed immediately, and would occupy 
so much space that none could be spared for the other 
side. I proposed that if its bulk could not be reduced bo 
as to admit of an answer in the same number, it should 
be postponed until a reply could be made ready for pub- 
lication in the next succeeding number. This and divers 
other offers were rejected, for the express reason that -Mi. 
Ingersoll would not consent.' Finding the Review con- 
trolled by him to suit himself, I do not think I was 
bound to go further." 

This explanation puts the affair in a light which reflects 
little credit on Mr. Ingersoll and the North American Re- 
view. If Mr. Ingersoll had perfect confidence in the 
strength of his position there is no conceivable reason 



INTRODUCTORY. 3 

why lie should consent to take this snap judgment on the 
counsel for the defence. If his purpose had been to stop 
the controversy, on finding himself in an intellectual 
combat with a strong man, he could not have devised a 
better method. Mr. Black was certainly not bound to 
go further and trust himself or his case to a Review that 
had outraged his rights, or to a man who had taken ad- 
vantage of an accident which had temporarily disabled 
his antagonist. 

Mr. Ingersoll in his reply indignantly accused Judge 
Black of personal detraction, and says, very justly, that 
" The theme (the Christian Eeligion) is great enough to 
engage the highest faculties of the human mind, and in 
the investigation of such a subject vituperation is singu- 
larly and vulgarly out of place." 

Nothing can be truer than this, but is it not a new 
departure for Mr. Ingersoll? Vituperation of an in- 
dividual or of a class, of the living or of the dead, is un- 
relieved vulgarity, and singularly out of place when treat- 
ing of a subject that demands the exercise of the highest 
faculties of the intellect, and which involves the destiny 
of man. Man's life is a tragedy, his first utterance is a 
cry of pain, his last the groan of death. It is indeed no 
subject to make merry over. Be man's future what it 
may, it is an awful subject from whatever point of view 
we may consider it. It has occupied the attention of the 
greatest intellects that ever lit on this earth, and it 
arouses anxiety in every heart, from the palace of the 
king to the cottage of the peasant. 



4 XOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

But does not Mr. Ingersoll's protest against Mr. Black 
sound strangely, coming as it does from one who for 
years past has been making the Christian Religion, its 
doctrines, institutions and sacred personages the butt of 
his vituperation and ridicule ? Judaism and Christianity 
have been burlesqued by him on the stage of the lecture 
hall. The ministers of the Old and the Xew Covenant 
have been exhibited as cunning and unprincipled trick- 
sters, vicious knaves and tyrants. Everything held sacred 
by every Christian heart lias been made the subject of 
his gibes, and of laughter for his audiences. And all 
this time while he has been combining the professions of 
the philosopher, the humorist and the ghoul, he has 
talked sweetly of delicacy, refinement, sentiment, feeling, 
honor bright, etc. All this time he has delighted in 
tearing and wounding and lacerating the hearts and faith 
and feelings of those by whose tolerance he is permitted 
to outrage the common sense and sentiment of Christen- 
dom. Truly, a protest against vulgarity and vituperation 
coming from such a source if a surprise — a case of Ivtm 
a non lucendo. 

What is the cause of this sudden chang 

The orator of -laughter and applause" is unexpectedly 
confronted by a lawyer, like himself, who deals with him 
unceremoniously, but who yet treats him with mor< 
sideration and decency than he treats the great Hebrew 
lawgiver Moses, and what is the result?- He stops 
clatter and pauses in his ribaldry t<> give bis opponent a 
lecture on delicacy, propriety and politeness ! If Black 



INTRODUCTORY. 

lias had the bad taste to make use of Ingersoll's methods, 
Ingersoll should be the last person to complain. 

You may outrage Christian sentiment, you may laugh 
at and burlesque Moses and Christ, but you must be 
genteel and polite and " nice" when you speak of Mr. 
Ingersoll. Judge Black forgot this, and hence the in- 
dignant protest. 

" The theme/* says Mr. Ingersoll, " is great enough to 
engage the highest faculties of the human mind." 

It may be well asked, What faculties of his mind has 
he thus far employed on this great theme ? Has it been 
the faculty of reason, or the faculty of ridicule ? 

Our great American wits have been content to allow 
their peculiar faculties to play on those subjects proper for 
the exercise of them, and in doing this they afford us amuse- 
ment and lighten the burdens of life. The best of them 
have carefully observed the proprieties, and never passed 
the boundary line that separates the sacred from the pro- 
fane. Mr. Ingersoll found the legitimate field of wit and 
drollery pre- occupied by Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, 
and others with whom he could not compete. He sought 
for new fields, and with a reckless audacity selects that 
which the civilized world has always held as sacred — Ee- 
ligion. In this new line (new at least for an American 
humorist) he is not content with trying to be a wit. he 
pretends to be a philosopher, a moralist, a theologian 
learned in the scriptures, a hermeneurist, and a historian. 
If his claims to all these qualifications can be made good, 
he is certainly well equipped for business. But he lacks 



6 NOTES ON IXGERSOLL. 

the intense earnestness and masculine vigor of Tom 
Paine, the learning and wit of Voltaire, the philosophical 
penetration of Hobbs and Bolingbroke, the analytical 
faculty of Herbert Spencer, the industry of Tyndall and 
Hnxley, and the comprehensiveness and incisive logic of 
John Stewart Mill. All these are masters in their way, 
whom Mr. Ingersoll has not succeeded in imitating or 
understanding. Wanting in originality, he draws liberal- 
ly from the writings of Paine and Voltaire for his points 
and arguments. He has not succeeded in advancing any- 
thing new against Christianity. Perhaps it is doing him 
injustice to expect it of him. Infidels from the time of 
Celsus, Porphyry and Julian have exhausted in vain the 
resources of human invention to discover implements to 
undermine the sublime fabric of Christianity. We must 
therefore not expect anything new from a modem infidel 
or atheist. All we can reasonably look for is a revamp- 
ing of the old and often refuted sophistries of the past. 
By means of a ready tongue and a grotesque imagination, 
Mr. Ingersoll succeeds in galvanizing these sapless corpses 
into a momentary appearance of life, but they will sink, 
as they sank before, into oblivion, as the Christian world 
moves on. 

If Mr. Black has been guilty of personal detraction, as 
Mr. Ingersoll insinuates, he has done wrong ; but in at- 
tacking a live man like Mr. Ingersoll, he has shown more 
courage and manliness than the latter has exhibited in 
his detractions of Moses, dead. The living can retort ; 
the dead can only listen and be silent. He who attacks 



IXTEODUCTOEY. 7 

the dead need not look for an answer in the next Review. 
If Black had outraged the character and misrepresented 
the words of Ingersoll, as the latter has outraged the 
character and misrepresented the words of Moses, he 
would have disgraced the cause he defended, and no con- 
demnation would be severe enough for the unchristian 
offence. Black attacked a living foe, with shield and 
.spear in rest ; that was at least brave. Ingersoll strikes 
at the great and honored dead, the leader and lawgiver of 
the most remarkable nation that ever rose and flourished 
and fell. The jackal can gnaw in safety the tongue of 
the dead lion, and the field mouse play its antics in his- 
footsteps on the plain. 

The character and moral code of Moses are as imper- 
vious to his attacks as are the pyramids of Egypt to the 
javelin of the wandering Arab who strikes their base as 
he passes and disappears, while they remain the objects- 
of wonder to future generations. 

The proper way to meet Mr. Ingersoll is not to defend 
Christianity against his scattering, inconsequent, illogical 
and unphilosophical attacks, but to make his article the 
subject to be considered; to analyze with careful scrutiny 
every statement he makes, every argument he adduces, 
every inference he draws; to grant nothing and take noth- 
ing for granted. The Christian is not bound at the call 
of Mr. Ingersoll or any one else to reprint the proofs of 
Christianity that are to be found in the writings of the 
great Christian philosophers and theologians. These 
proofs are on record and Mr. Ingersoll's ancestors in 



b NOTES OX INGEBSOLL. 

atheism and unbelief, from Anaximander, Epicurus and 

Lucretius down to d'Holbach, Laland, Cabanis, Hobbes 
and Paine, have never answered them. 

It will be time to think of new defences when the old 
have been captured. Mr. Ingersoll's ignorance of those 
arguments is not sufficient reason why they should be 
repeated. I do not propose to repeat them, as it is nol 
Christianity that is on trial, but Mr. Ingersoll's article. 
It is to be examined with analytical care and then lefi u> 
the reader to determine what it is worth. 

It has been well said by some keen observer, that what- 
ever else a man writes, he always writes himself. This is 
conspicuously true of Mr. Ingersoll. His writings are a 
mere evolution of himself on paper. The glitter, the 
sophistry, the bad faith, verbal leger de main, the pervad- 
ing egotism, the assumed infallibility, and the brazen 
audacity of statement so conspicuous in his writings, are 
the full bloom and blossom of his character. 

In these notes I shall follow him through his tortuous 
windings as closely as possible. And that I may not 
misrepresent him, or fall, even unintentionally, into un- 
fairness, I intend that Mr. Ingersoll shall always speak 
for himself in his own very words. From this out then 
it will be a dialogue between him immentator. 



CHAPTER I. 

ME. IXGEESOLL'S "IDEA," AND WHAT COMES OF IT. 

F\"G-EBSOLL — " The universe, according to my idea, 
is, always was, and forever will be. * * It is the 
one eternal being — the only thing that ever did, does, or 
can exist." 

Comment — When you say "according to my idea" you 
leave the inference that this theory of an eternal universe 
never occurred to the mind of man until your brain ac- 
quired its full development. Of course you did not in- 
tend to mislead or deceive, you simply meant that your 
"idea," of the universe, is like most of our modern plays, 
adapted from the French, Or elsewhere. Your philosophy, 
like those adapted plays, wants the freshness and flavor 
of originality, and suffers from bad translation. The 
old originals from whom you copy thought it incumbent 
on them to give a reason, or at least a show of reason, for 
their " idea," In this enlightened age you do not deem 
this necessary. It is sufficient for you to formulate your 
"idea." To attempt to prove it would be beneath you. 
Is this the reason why you do not advance one single 
argument to prove the eternity of matter ? Have you got 
so far as to believe that your " idea" has the force of an 
argument, or that the science of philosophy must be re- 
adjusted because you. happen to have an "idea?" 

When you say : The universe is the one eternal being 
you of course mean this visible, material, ever-changing 
universe of matter. Inasmuch as you have given your 



10 NOTES OX INGERS0LL, 

"idea" without any reason or argument to support it, it 
would be a work of supererogation to attempt to refute 
it. It is sufficient to oppose my idea to yours. But I 
will go further and see if your idea of eternal matter does 
not involve a contradiction. Of course you know that a 
statement or proposition that involves a contradiction 
cannot be true. You affirm the eternity of matter. On 
this I reason thus : 

That which is eternal is infinite. It must be infinite 
because, if eternal, it can have nothing to limit it. 

But that which is infinite must be infinite in every way* 
If limited in any way it would not be infinite. 

Xow, matter is limited. It is composed of parts, and 
composition is limitation. It is subject to change, and 
change involves limitation. Change supposes succession, 
and there can be no succession without a beginning, and 
therefore limitation. Thus far we are borne out by 
reason, experience and common sense. 
Then- 
Matter is limited and therefore finite, and if finite in 
anything, finite in everything ; and if finite in every- 
thing, therefore finite in time, and therefore not eternal. 
The idea of an eternal, self -existent being is incompati- 
ble in every point of view with our idea of matter. The 
former is essentially simple, unchangeable, impassible, 
and one. The latter is composite, changeable, passible, 
and multiple. To assert that matter is eternal is to as- 
sert that all these antagonistic attributes are identical — 
a privilege granted by sane men to lunatics only. 

Ixgersoll — "The universe, according to my idea. is. 
always was, and forever will be." 

Comment — We have seen that this " idea" involves a 
contradiction as absurd as to say that parallel lines can 



MK. I^GEKSOLL'S IDEA AND WHAT COMES OF IT. 11 

meet, or that a thing can be and not be at the same time. 
But other important consequences follow from your 
"idea." 

If this universe of matter alone exists, the mind, intel- 
lect or soul must be matter, or a form of matter. Sublimate 
or attenuate matter to an indefinite extent, it yet remains 
matter. Now if mind is matter, it must obey the forces 
that govern and regulate the action of matter. The forces 
that govern matter are invariable. From this it follows 
that every thought of the philosopher, every calculation of 
the mathematician, every imagination and fancy of the 
poet, are mere results of material forces, entirely inde- 
pendent of the individuals conceiving them ! 

The sublime conceptions and creations of Shakespeare 
and Milton, the wonderful discoveries of Newton, Arago, 
and Young, the creations of Eaphael and Angelo, are 
nothing more than the flowering and blooming of carnal 
vegetation. Are all the externs of lunatic asylums pre- 
pared to accept this philosophy ? 

But let us go a little further : You are proud of your 
philosophy and your wisdom. But why should you be 
so if your ideas are the mere results of the forces that 
govern matter ? And why should you try to convert the 
world to your way of thinking if the world must be gov- 
erned by the unalterable laws of matter ? I believe in 
the Holy Scriptures. Is that the result of material 
forces ? If so why try to persuade me to the contrary ? 
If your materialistic theory is true, how can I help being 
a Christian ? If I am the victim of unalterable forces 
or laws ,why try to convince or persuade me ? Do these 
material forces compel you to try to persuade me to assent 
to your notions and at the same time compel me to reject 
them? 



12 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

You are an apostle of liberty and freedom. If there 
is anything of value in this world it is liberty. Yon re- 
peat this idea till your readers get tired of it. Now, if 
there is nothing but matter, and if matter is governed by 
invariable laws, there can be no liberty whatever. Materi- 
alism destroys human liberty and free agency, leaving 
man the victim of fate. You who prize liberty so highly 
should repudiate a theory that destroys it. If man is 
not free, and he cannot be according to your materialistic 
doctrine, you are inconsistent when you appeal to his in- 
telligence. You are equally inconsistent if you expect 
your reasonings to convince him, since his convictions 
must, in your theory, depend on material forces inde- 
pendent of him and you. If you understand your prin- 
ciples, you are bound by the force of logic to be silent 
and wait in patience the outcome of those forces which 
are unalterable, irresistible and unavoidable. If men's 
thoughts are the result of mere physical forces it is in- 
sanity to reason with them. As well might you reason 
with a clock for running too fast, with fire for burning, 
or with a tree for STowino-. 



CHAPTER II. 

SOMETHING ABOUT THE LAWS OF XATURE, AXD HOW 
ME. IXGERSOLL '•GATHERS" AX IDEA — HIS IDEA OF 
HYDRAULICS. 

IXG-EESOLL — " We know nothing of what we call the 
laws of nature, except as we gather the idea of law 
from the uniformity of phenomena springing from like 
conditions. To make myself clear : Water always runs 
down hill." 

Comment — We acquire a knowledge of the laws of 
nature by observing the effects of the forces of nature, 
hut we do not gather " an idea of law" from the study of 
these forces and their effects. The idea of law in general 
is, and must be, prior to the idea of particular laws. We 
cannot assert a law in a given case without having an 
idea of law in general. We say a particular law is a law 
because it corresponds with the norm of law which exists 
intuitively in the mind. The idea of law then does not 
come from observing phenomena. These phenomena 
enable us to acquire a knowledge of particular laws, but 
not of law. The laws of nature in the last analysis are 
that intimate and invariable connection which exists be- 
tween natural causes and effects. This idea of cause and. 
effect, or the principle of causality as it is called, is the 
basis on which we make our deductions from phenomena. 
A stone thrown up falls to the ground. The mind re- 
ferring to its own intuition of causality, asks : What 
13 



14 NOTES ON" INGERSOLL. 

caused it to fall ? The experiment is repeated with a 
like result. The mind here does not " gather an idea of 
law" but begins instinctively to seek the law in the case. 
To seek for a law presupposes the idea of law, for we do 
not seek for that of which we have no idea. 

To talk about "gathering an idea of law from phe- 
nomena" is unphilosophical. We conclude or deduce 
laws from phenomena, but we cannot " gather an idea of 
law" from anything. To gather an idea is like gathering 
a huckleberry, or an Ingersoll. It is not usual to gather 
a unit. You confound idea with judgment or deduction. 

The illustration you give to make yourself clear is un- 
fortunate. You say : 

Ixgersoll — " To make myself clear : Water always runs 
down hill." 

Comment — How then did it get up the hill ? Or is 

there a perennial spring up there ? Water does not al- 
ways run down hill. To run down hill is an exception 
to the general mode of the action of water. In the pres- 
ent condition of the physical world, the tendency of 
water is upward and outward. This will be admitted of 
water in the form of steam or vapor. The water that 
falls as rain has been first taken up by the sun's heat- 
Water runs up in the capillary tubes of every vegetable 
that grows. More water ascends in the capillaries of the 
vegetable world in one day than falls over Niagara in a 
year. Water runs up in all rivers that run toward the 
equator. The Mississippi river carries its waters up an 
inclined plane a perpendicular distance of about four 
miles. The same in proportion is true of the Nile. 
This earth on which we live and play the wise and the 
foolish, is not a sphere, but a spheroid. It is flattened at 
the poles. The lowest places on the earth are the regions 



HIS IDEA OF HYDRAULICS 15 

about the North and South poles. The equator all 
around the earth is a mountain thirteen miles higher than 
the surface at the poles. The polar regions are vast sunken 
valleys. Xow I ask : If " water always runs down-hill/' 
why do not the waters of all the vast oceans flood with 
impetuosity toward the poles ? Why do not those waters 
seek their level equidistant from the centre and make the 
earth a perfect sphere ? Two-thirds of the earth's sur- 
face consists of water. These multitudinous waters do 
not run down-hill — do not flow down towards the valleys 
of the poles. On the contrary, they remain on a vast 
slope that rises toward the equator a perpendicular height 
of thirteen miles. They remain there on that inclined 
plane — on that hill-side forever. You may say this is 
caused by the rotation of the earth. I do not care what 
causes it. The fact of it disproves your statement that 
water always runs down-hill. 

You saw somewhere a bit of water running down a hill, 
and you "gathered the idea" that it always does so. 
Your view was too narrow and local. It wanted breadth 
and comprehensiveness. You misinterpret nature as you 
misunderstood and misinterpreted Moses and revealed 
religion. You have proved yourself an incompetent in- 
terpreter of nature, and you cannot be relied on when 
you presume to interpret, criticise, condemn, or deny that 
which is above nature. 

Ixgersoll — " The theist says that this (water runs down 
hill) happens because there is behind the phenomenon an 
active law." 

Commext — We have seen that you misunderstand 
nature, and from what you now say it is evident that you 
do not understand what the theist means. The the- 
ist does not say there is behind the phenomenon an 



16 NOTES ON INGERSOLL, 

active law. He repudiates the stupidities you attribute 
to him. What the theist does say is this : Behind, prior 
to, and concomitant with the phenomenon, there is a 
static or permanent force which is manifested when the 
proper conditions are placed. A stone thrown up falls. 
The power or force that brought it down was there be- 
fore it was thrown up, and continues after it has fallen, 
to keep it down. The relation between the stone and 
the force is constant and permanent. This force as 
itself permanently, hut is manifested to us only under 
certain conditions. • This force, sometimes improperly 
called a law, is what we understand by gravitation. It 
was projected into nature, when God created nature. 

Ingersoll — " As a matter of fact, law is this side of the 
phenomenon." 

Comment — That depends on what you mean by law. 
If by the word you mean that force which actuates the 
phenomenon, your statement is not correct, and your 
play on the word ••law" is beneath the dignity of a phil- 
osopher. 

Ixgersoll — •• Law does not cause the phenomenon, but 
the phenomenon causes the idea of law in our minds." 

Comment — If by law you mean the force I have spoken 
of, it does cause the phenomenon. If you mean by law 
a mere verbal formula or statement of what a given force 
will do under given circumstances, you are trifling with 
the intelligence of your readers. Phenomena may enable 
us to acquire the knowledge of a law, but as we have 
already seen, they cannot cause or originate the id 
law in our minds. You confound the idea of law with 
the knowledge of laws. A philosopher should noi write 
with looseness of expression and indeterminatem 
thought. L'nr in our language lias more than one 



MR. LKTGERSOLL'S IDEA AXD WHAT COMES OF IT. 1? 

meaning. When speaking of nature,, it may mean the 
action of natural forces, or it may mean a verbal formula 
or statement of what that action is, or will be in given 
circumstances. Your purpose required that these two 
meanings should be confounded, and you accordingly 
confounded them. 

Phenomena do not cause the idea of law. The men- 
tal faculty of associating like events and referring them 
to a common cause, together with the faculty of general- 
ization, enables us to formulate laws. A series of like 
phenomena may suggest a law to the mind already pos- 
sessed of the idea of law, but it does not and cannot in 
the nature of things " cause the idea of law." The idea 
of law must precede the knowledge of a law. 

Ixgersoll — " This idea (of law) is produced from (by ?) 
the fact that under like circumstances the same (a like ?) 
phenomenon always happens." 

Comment — A series of like phenomena suggest the ex- 
istence of force, not the idea of law ; and when like phe- 
nomena always happen under like circumstances, we are 
led to conclude that it is the same force that is acting in 
each case. Further observation of this force's manifesta- 
tion — and all phenomena are the manifestation of force — 
enables us to distinguish it from other forces, to identify it 
by its invariable act, and to associate it with its effects. 
Having arrived at this degree of familiarity with a force and 
its act, we formulate in words what it will do under given 
circumstances. These formulas are called laws of nature » 
In this sense these laws are purely subjective, that is to 
say, they exist only in the mind apprehending them, and 
not in nature. There is an inherent principle in the 
forces of nature which causes them to act in the same 
manner under the same circumstances. This, however, 



18 NOTES OX EKTGEBSOLL. 

is not a law, but the nature of the forces themselves. The 
laws of nature, then, as commonly understood, arc tlu 
uniform action of natural forces expressed in words. When 
physicists speak of the laws of nature, they refer to the 
forces of which the laws are but the verbal expression. 
They suppose philosophers have sufficient intelligence to 
understand this fact : and yet it appears that they are 
sometimes mistaken. In all you say on this subject you 
confound law with force; whether this is done intention- 
ally or through ignorance I will not stop to consider. 

Ixgersoll — "Mr. Black probably thinks tlr.it the dif- 
ference in the weight of rocks and clouds was created by 
law." 

Comment — God indirectly created natural effects when 
lie created the natural forces which cause them. When 
God created the forces of nature he by his will gave them 
their modes of action — or laid down laws for them. 
Hence the difference in the weight of rocks and clouds 
arises from the action of those forces to which God gave 
modes or laws of action, and hence again this difference 
in weight is truly caused by the law, or will of God. So 
what you imagined to he a patent absurdity is an undeni- 
able truth. If God had not given to the force called gravi- 
tation its knoAvn mode of action there would and could he 
no difference in the weight of rocks and clouds — for 
weight is nothing more than the measure of gravitation's 
force. Eliminate this force from your rocks and clouds 
and their weight would be nil ; and as they would have no 
weight they would of course have no difference in weight. 
But to return ; the difference between the weight of rocks 
and clouds arises from the fact that although the same 
force acts on both of them at the same time and in the 
same manner, it does so under different, and not like. 



ME. IXGEESOLES IDEA AX1) WHAT-COMES OF IT. 19 

circumstances. Density is a circumstance in the case,, 
and that of the rock is greater than that of the cloud. 
Thus, while the same force is acting on both, in the same 
manner, it does so under different circumstances,, and 
hence the difference in weight. This difference is to be 
traced back to the will of God when he gave modes of 
action to nature's forces. 

Ixgeesoll — " Mr. Black probably thinks that parallel 
lines fail to unite only because it is illegal."" 

Comment — Mr. Black "probably thinks" that when 
you trifle in this way, you are not exercising the higher fac- 
ulties of your mind to any great extent. Whatever else Mr. 
Black may be, he is certainly not a fool. You speak 
much of t *candor"' and "honor bright.*' Do you intend 
what you have said here as an illustration of those virtues ? 

Ixgeesoll — " It seems to me that law cannot be the 
cause of phenomena, but is an effect produced in our 
minds by their succession and resemblance.'" 

Comment — It would seem that it seems so to you, 
since you have repeated that idea three times in half a 
page of your article. But granting that it seems so to 
you ; are you so simple as to advance that as an argu- 
ment ? Your quibbles on the word "law" have been al- 
ready exposed. Law is not an effect produced in our 
minds. It is the result of the mind's, own action, the de- 
duction which the mind draws from a series of phe- 
nomena. 



CHAPTER III. 

A TOUCH OF METAPHYSICS ; WITH A TAIL-PIECE ABOUT 
" HONEST THOUGHT."' 

INGEPiSOLL — " To put a God back of the universe, 
compels us to admit that there was a time when 
nothing existed except this God." 

Comment — As time began with creation and is the 
measure of its endurance, it follows that before creation 
was, time was not. To say, therefore, that God existed 
in time is unphilosophical. God IS. To him there is 
neither past, present nor future — only eternity. But 
granted that God is alone before creation was, what do 
you infer from it ? 

Ingersoll — " That this God lived from eternity in in- 
finite vacuum and absolute idleness." 

Comment — If God lived in it, as you say, it could not 
be vacuum. A vacuum is that in which nothing is. In 
the hypothesis that God is, he is something ; he is in- 
finite, and hence an infinite vacuum is infinite nonsense. 
But the word has a gross, material sense, and you used it 
for a purpose. 

Ingersoll — -And in absolute idleness." 

Comment — Christian philosophy teaches us that God 
is pure act, the source and origin of all activity and life. 
To say that such a being can under any circumstan 
in absolute idleness or non-action is simply an expression 
of human ignorance. 
20 



A TOUCH OF METAPHYSICS. 21 

You may say this theory of Christian philosophy is er- 
roneous. But that is nothing to the purpose until you 
have demonstrated the error of it, which is what you 
undertook to do. You attack that philosophy and you 
must meet its positions as they are, not as you would 
make them appear ; and overthrow them if you can. 

Ixgeesoll — " The mind of every thoughtful man is 
forced to one of two conclusions : Either that the uni- 
verse is self -existent, or that it was created by a self-ex- 
istent being. To my mind there is far more difficulty in 
the second hypothesis than in the first/' 

Commext — It is to be regretted that you did not take 
the time and space to show the difference in the weight of 
those difficulties — to show how the existence of an eternal 
self -existent creator presents more difficulties to the mind 
than does the existence of eternal matter. The existence 
of an eternal creator may be incomprehensible to unaided 
reason, but it is not contrary to it. While the eternity of 
matter, as we have seen, involves the co-existence of 
mutually destructive attributes in the same subject at the 
same time, and is therefore contradictory to reason. 

There have been many men of thoughtful minds who 
did not see that they were forced to adopt either of your 
two conclusions. The pantheists of ancient and modern 
times, of India and Europe, hold that the universe was 
neither eternal nor created, but that it was an emanation 
from God, having no real existence of its own, a mere 
dream or illusion. These philosophers were more radical 
than you. They believed that God alone is real, and that 
all else is phantasm. In believing that God is more im- 
mediately cognizable to the intellect than the material 
universe is, they showed a more profound philosophical 
sense than is exhibited bv vour school;- The Gnostics two 



22 XOTES OX INGEKSOLL. 

thousand years ago held this same doctrine of emanation. 
The neo-platonists, like some of our German philosophers, 
denied the objective reality of the universe. Spinosa 
held that God alone has real existence, and all thing- are 
but forms of his extension. Kant held that we can have 
absolute certainty of nothing ; which is equivalent to a 
denial of both God and the universe. Fichte taught that 
nothing exists but the me — individual consciousness, and 
that all things else are but the forms or manifestations of 
this me, or individual consciousness. Schelling, Hegel, 
and other philosophers of the German pantheistic school, 
held the same as Fichte. The French eclectics, led by 
Cousin, denied the creation, and held that the universe is 
a mere apparition by which the divine Being is exteriorly 
manifested, — the mere ghost of the Infinite. All these 
are pantheists, some holding emu not ion, others divine 
evolution, or Das Werden, as Spinosa called it, and others 
still, idealism. Xow, none of these are included in either 
of your two necessary conclusions. You will see that 
thoughtful men have pondered long on this subject be- 
fore you directed your attention to it, and that they did 
not come to the conclusion you did. They wrote many 
books to elucidate what you dismiss in half a dozen 
lines. They erred in denying the reality of matter : you 
err in asserting its eternal existence. To assert God 
and deny matter shows a higher philosophical culture 
than to assert matter and deny God. The ontological 
conceptions of the Hindoos and Chinese of 3,000 years 
ago, were therefore profound, and more in keeping with 
Christian philosophy than are the ill-digested notions of 
our modern infidels. The former grasped the idea of 
necessary being, but failed to recognize the real in the 
universe. The latter have the ability to apprehend the 



"HOXEST THOUGHT." 23 

reality of the visible, tangible world, but cannot rise 
above it — to a conception of necessary being. 

Ixgersoll — "Of course, upon questions like this,, 
nothing can be absolutely known.'' 

Commext — To know anything absolutely is to 
know it in all its relations with the universe and 
with God, with the necessary and the contigent- 
The infinite intelligence alone can know things in this 
way, and therefore on "questions like these," or any 
other questions, we cannot have absolute knowledge, be- 
cause our minds are finite. But this does not prevent 
us from knowing with certainty what we do know. We 
know not God absolutely, but we know with certainty 
that he is. 

Ixgersoll — "What we know of the infinite is almost 
infinitely limited, but little as we know, all have an equal 
right to give their honest thought." 

Commext — Has any man the right, common sense be- 
ing the judge, to talk about that of which his knowledge 
is almost infinitely limited ? All may have an equal right 
to give their honest thought, but none have the right to 
give their honest thought on all subjects and under all cir- 
cumstances. Common sense and decency forbid it. The 
honesty of a thought does not give weight or importance or 
truth to it. If so lunatics would be the best of reasoners, 
for none are more honest in their thoughts than they- 
Thought must be judged in reference to its truth, and 
not in reference to the honesty of him who thinks it. 
This plea of honesty in thinking is a justification of 
every error and crime, for we must in the very nature of 
the case take the thinker's word for the honesty of his 
thought. Guiteau, if we can believe him, expressed his 



24 NOTES OX IXGEKSOLL. 

honest thought by means of an English bull-clog revolver, 
unci if your theory be true he had a right to do it. 

The right to give an honest thought implies the right 
to realize that thought in action and habit. If it means 
less than this, it means simply the right to gabble like an 
idiot. I assume that it is not this latter right you claim. 
Then in claiming the right to give your honest thought, 
you claim the right to realize the honest thought in act 
and practice, to express it in the acts of your practical 
life, and cause it, as far as you can, to permeate, and ob- 
tain in human society. If your claim for liberty of 
thought means less than this, it is the veriest delusion. 

I take it then that in claiming the right to give your 
honest thought, you claim the right to promulgate that 
thought, and to put it in practice in the affairs of life. 
]S"ow, in view of this claim of yours, I ask, by what 
right do you interfere with the slave-holder's honest 
thought, or the Mormon's honest thought ? Your plea 
for the right of expressing honest thought is a miserable 
pretense, or else by it you mean that those only who 
agree with you have the right of expressing it in word or 
action. The doctrines of our loquacious liberals, when 
analyzed, will be found to mean precisely this and noth- 
ing more. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SOMETHING ABOUT THE DESIGN OF THE UNIVERSE ; 
AND INGERSOLL'S "CURIOUS AXD WONDERFUL 
THING.*' 

MR. ING-ERSOLL next proceeds to show that the 
argument for the existence of God, drawn from 
the plan or design of the universe is not conclusive. As 
Mr. Black did not advance this argument, I am at a loss to 
understand why it was introduced by Mr. Ingersoll, un- 
less it was to give us a specimen of his ability in the way 
of metaphysical skyrocketing. Let us hear him : 

Ingersoll — " It will not do to say that the universe 
was designed, and therefore there must be a designer." 

Comment — Why not, if all have a right to give their 

honest thought ? 

Ingersoll — "There must be proof that it was de- 
signed." 

Comment — Certainly, and that proof is to be found in 
every work on theology and philosophy that treats of the 
subject. As a lawyer you know that proofs are not to be 
thrown out of court by a mere stroke of the pen. It 
was incumbent on you to examine those proofs and show 
that they are not adequate, or accept them. Instead of 
this, you very cunningly leave the inference that no such 
proofs exist. If you knew of those proofs you should in 
all candor have met them fairly ; if you were ignorant of 



26 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

them, you should have informed yourself of the argu- 
ments on the other side before you undertook to answer 
them. You have said "candor is the courage of the 
soul.'' Let us have courage. 

The proofs given by theologians and Christian philos- 
ophers that evidences of plan and design exist in this 
physical universe have never been met by you. Accord- 
ing to the rules of logic they are good until you meet and 
overthrow them. This you must do by reason., and not 
bald assertion. 

Ingebsoll — " It will not do to say that the universe 
has a plan, and then assert that there must have been an 
infinite maker." 

Comment — Of course it will not do to merely say it 
without any proofs to back the statement., as you say so 
many things, and therefore Christian scholars invariably 
supply those proofs. The proofs being good until re- 
futed, it does and must follow that there is an infinite 
planner, designer, Creator. 

Ixgersoll — " The idea that a design must have a be- 
ginning, and that a designer need not, is a simple expres- 
sion of human ignorance." 

Comment — On the contrary, it is one of the highest 
reaches of human reason. But you have evidently 
lost the thread of the argument you are trying to refute. 
Christian philosophy does not assert that the plan or de- 
sign of the universe had a beginning. On the contrary, 
it teaches that the plan or design existed in the mind of 
God from all eternit}', and is the eternal archetype of all 
created things. The universe is the eternal idea <»!' <><,<] 
realized in time and space by the creative act. To say 
that the design of this universe had a beginning is truly 
a simple expression of human ignorance. As the design 



THE DESIGN OF THE UNIVERSE. 27 

is eternal the designer must be eternal ; as the design had 
no beginning the designer has none. The designs of 
finite minds must have a beginning, but we must not 
measure God's capacity by man's incapacity, an error you 
seem incapable of avoiding. 

Ingersoll "We find a watch, and we say : So cu- 
rious and wonderful a thing must have had a maker." 

Comment — The Christian does not assert that it had a 
maker because it is curious and wonderful, but because 
it shows evidence of having been made. The curious- 
ness and wonderfulness of the watch suggests the idea of 
an intelligent maker. A mud pie will suggest the idea of 
a maker equally as well as a gold chronometer. 

Ingersoll — " We find the watchmaker and we say : So 
curious and wonderful a thing as man must have had a 
maker." 

Comment — Yes, but not because he is curious and 
wonderful, but because he is, and is finite. Verily, it 
would be unfortunate for Christianity if you were per- 
mitted to present its case. 

Ingersoll — "We find God, and we then say : He is so 
wonderful that he must not have had a maker." 

Comment — You say this, but " we" don't. When we 
find God we find the self-existent Being, infinite and 
eternal, and therefore we say, he must not have had a 
maker. That is the way the Christian reasons, and it is 
somewhat different from the childish nonsense you would 
put into his mouth. 

Ingersoll — " In other words, all things a little won- 
derful must have been created." 

Comment — You use that word " wonderful" as a boy 
uses a toy drum, to the disgust of all who hear it. All 



28 NOTES OX INGEBSOLL. 

things have been created, not because they are curious 
and wonderful, but because they exist and are finite. 
The microscopic grain of sand that is wafted by the winds 
and the Avaves proves the existence of a Creator as clearly 
as does this vast- and wonderful universe. It is not, then, 
as you say, the wonder of the thing that suggests the idea 
of creation, hut the existence of the thing. 

Ixgersoll — "One would suppose that just as the 
wonder increased the necessity for a creator increased." 

Comment — The one who would so suppose must be 
supposed to have a very limited knowledge of philosophy 
or a very limited intellect. If Christian philosophy were 
as silly as you have represented, or rather misrepresented 
it above, it would indeed be contemptible. Candor and 
honor require that when you attack a system or an in- 
stitution, you should attack it in its own position, and 
not make fictitious and absurd positions for it, and then 
proceed with show of logic to demolish the nonsense en- 
gendered in your own brain and presented to the public 
as the principles of Christian philosophy. To misrepre- 
sent Christian philosophy is a confession of weakness, an 
admission that it must be misrepresented before it can be 
successfully assailed. 

Ixgersoll — " Is it possible that a designer exists from 
all eternity without a design ?" 

Comment — Yes, the idea of a self-existent, eternal de- 
signer excludes the idea of a design prior to or independ- 
ent of him. This is so self-evident that it needs only to 
be stated. The philosopher who asks such an absurd 
question is like his watchmaker, a " curious and wonder- 
ful thing." 

Ixgersoll — " Was there no design in hating an in- 
finite designer ?" 



"A CURIOUS AND WONDERFUL THING." 29 

Comment — Xone whatever, since there cannot be 
anything* back of the infinite and eternal designer. There 
can be nothing more infinite than the infinite, nothing- 
prior to the eternal. It is as if yon should ask : Is there 
anything more circular than a circle, or anything squarer 
than a square ? 

Ingersoll — " For me it is hard to see the plan or de- 
sign in earthquakes and pestilences." 

Comment — This is not surprising, since you have with 
commendable humility admitted that what you know 
about questions like these is almost infinitely limited. 
Until you see or understand the design it is inconsistent 
in you to condemn it. A boy stood near the railway gaz- 
ing philosophically at a passing train. A burning cinder 
from -$ie smoke stack struck him in the eye. He mused 
on the incident in this way : w For me it is hard to see 
what design or plan this great corporation could have 
had in spending vast sums of money to throw that cinder 
in my eye. It is somewhat difficult to discern design or 
•benevolence in it." TTho will say that boy was not 
a philosopher and an egotist, or that a fortune does not 
await him when he is old enough to take the lecture 
field? 

Ingersoll — " It is somewhat difficult to discern the 
design or the benevolence in so making the world that 
billions of animals live only,on the agonies of others." 

Comment — Until you prove that God so made the 
world that billions of animals live on the agonies of 
others, you are not called upon to discern design or be- 
nevolence in this agonizing state of things. It does not 
follow because agony and suffering exist that God de- 
signed it to be so. It is for you to prove that God de- 
signed this suffering before you attribute it to him. You 
should be just — even to God. 



30 NOTES OX IXGEKSOLL. 

Whence then the sufferings of this world ? 

Crime is the result of human liberty — though not a 
necessary result — and suffering is the result of crime. 
Physical evil is the result of moral evil, and moral evil is 
the result of a perverse use of liberty, which is good in 
itself. God made man a free agent, not that he might 
abuse his freedom, but that he might use it to assist him 
in his beneficent design, which is the happiness of his 
creatures. But man abused the gift of liberty, and in 
doing so produced discord in universal harmony. The 
free agent man proved untrue to his trust. He betrayed 
it, and thus became a victim of the disorder he himself 
produced. The agent is responsible to his principal, and 
a failure to perform the duties assigned him brings upon 
him punishment and disgrace. The pagan philosopher 
Plato understood this when he wrote : " He (the wrong- 
doer) is not able to see that evil (suffering), ever united 
to each act of wrong, follows him in his insatiate cravings 
for what is unholy, and that he has to drag along with 
him the long chain of his wrong-doings, both while he is 
moving along upon this earth, and when he shall take, 
under the earth (in hell we would say), an endless jour- 
ney of dishonor and frightful miseries.'' 

Evils that are the results of man's perversion of liberty 
cannot be attributed to the design of God : and those 
who so attribute them are as reasonless as the ship- 
wrecked mariners who condemn the captain for the suf- 
ferings which they brought upon themselves by their dis- 
obedience to his commands, or as the criminal who at- 
tributes his punishment to the judge or jury, when it is 
the result of his own crime. 

While admitting the existence of evils and sufferings 
in the world, the Christian does not, and is not bound by 



"A CURIOUS AXD WONDERFUL THIXG." 31 

liis principles, to admit that they are the result of the 
design or plan of God in creating the universe. 

To those who see in man's nature and destiny nothing- 
higher than that of the grasshopper or the potato-bug. 
who believe that man's life ends with the death or de- 
composition of his outer shell, there must be something 
inexplicable in the sufferings of this life. 

But to the Christian who looks upon this life and its 
vicissitudes as a mere phase of man's immortal career, 
who considers this world of time as the womb of the 
eternal years, the stiff eriugs of this life are but the tem- 
porary inconveniences of the weary traveller on his home- 
ward voyage. Their weight is lightened and their sharp- 
ness blunted by the thought of home with its comforts 
and its rest. He suffers with patience and resignation to 
the will of his eternal Father, with the consoling hope 
that when he is freed from the body of this death he will 
pass into the eternal day where death and pain are 
known no more forever. Buo;ced up by faith and hope 
he says in his inmost soul : 

"Beyond the parting and the meeting 
I shall be soon : 
Beyond the farewell and the greeting, 
Beyond the pulse's fever beating 
I shall be soon. 

••'Beyond the frost chain and the fever 

I shall be soon ; 
Beyond the rock waste and the river, 
Beyond the ever and the never, 

I shall be soon. 

Love, rest, and home! 

Sweet home! 

Lord, tarry not, but come." 



CHAPTER V. 

OX THE JUSTICE OF GOD — A FUTURE STATE — SOME 
SPECIMENS OF THE COLOXEL's " HON EST" METHODS. 

INGEKSOLL — "The justice of God is not visible to 
me in the history of this world." 

Commext — Might not this strange circumstance arise 
from intellectual ophthalmia ? Grant that it is not visi- 
ble to you, does it follow that it is not in this world ? 
Does your failure to see it demonstrate that it is not ? 
When you make your limited vision the measure of God's 
justice you usurp the attributes of the Infinite, put your 
judgment above his, and attempt to assume his place. 
Men have been kindly but firmly consigned to insane 
asylums for such philosophy ; and curious visitors meet 
with them there almost every day. It is in the last an- 
alysis a question of God's existence, for if there is an in- 
finite self : existent Being he must, from his very nature, 
be infinite in everything, and if in everything, infinite in 
his justice. To assert that he is not infinitely just is to 
deny his existence. But your statement supposes his ex- 
istence, and therefore grants his infinite justice. If then 
that justice which exists by the logic of your position, is 
not visible to you, you should doubt, not thai justice, but 
the powers of your vision. This is difficult to a man of 
almost infinite self-assertive capacity, but it is wisdom. 

Ixgeksoll — " When I think of the suffering and death, 
of the poverty and crime, of the cruelty and malice, of 
32 



THE JUSTICE OF GOD. 33 

the heartless ness of this 'plan' or ' design' where beak 
and claw and tooth tear and rend the quivering flesh of 
weakness and despair, I cannot convince myself that it is 
the result of infinite wisdom, benevolence and justice." 
Oox^iext — As you are not required by Christian phil- 
osophy to believe that the evils you describe are the re- 
sult of G-od's plan or design in creating the universe, you 
are not called upon to reconcile those evils with G-od's 
wisdom, benevolence or justice. If you have been labor- 
ing under the notion that G-od planned and designed the 
miseries of this world, and under that delusion you have 
tried to reconcile the original plan of this infinitely just 
G-od with the facts of life, you have been exhausting 
your energies in a very foolish piece of business. Your 
very effort in that dirction proves that you have not 
grasped the situation. In the article of yours that I am 
now commenting on you confess your ignorance of the 
divine plan or design, and yet you presume to attribute 
suffering, death, crime, cruelty and malice to that plan. 
Above all things it behooveth a philosopher to be con- 
sistent. It is unphilosophical to attribute to a plan ob- 
jectional features when you confess ignorance of that 
plan. 

Ixgersoll — "Most Christians have seen and recog- 
nized this difficulty (that of reconciling the miseries of 
this life with the justice of G-od), and have endeavored 
to avoid it by giving G-od an opportunity in another 
world to rectify the seeming mistake of this." 

Comment — When the position of "most Christians" 
is properly and truthfully stated there is no difficulty to 
see or avoid. The other world exists without reference 
to man's innocence or guilt, happiness or misery in this. 
Your insinuation that Christians invented the future 



34 KOTES 02* INGERSOLL. 

state shows either discreditable ignorance of the history 
of human thought, or a desire to misrepresent. There 
is no middle way out of the dilemma for you. Ignorance 
is a crime in one who assumes the office of a teacher of 
his fellow men, and misrepresentation is, as you would 
say, " singularly and vulgarly out of place" in treating of 
a subject that requires the exercise of the highest facul- 
ties of the human mind. 

The doctrine of a future state of existence has been 
universally believed, especially by the informed of man- 
kind in all ages and places. History clearly shows that 
the united voice of ancient nations proclaimed this doc- 
trine. The Egyptians, the Persians, the Hindoos, both 
Brahmists and Buddhists, the Chinese, whether the fol- 
lowers of Lao Tzue, Confucius or Gautama ; the Phoeni- 
cians, Assyrians, Scythians, Celts and Druids, as well as 
the Greeks and the Romans, believed in a future state. 
There is not an ancient nation or tribe of which history 
furnishes an account, which did not with greater or less 
clearness, believe in a future state. The notions of many 
of them were very obscure and unsatisfactory, embracing 
much that was ridiculous and absurd ; but still, though 
shadows and darkness and clouds rested upon their 
minds, their hopes penetrated the gloomy future, giving 
evidence of an internal consciousness of the insufficiency 
of the present world to satisfy the ardent aspirations of 
their souls. Our American Indians believe in a future 
state. The human race, then, in all times, has believed 
in a future state, and yet in the face of this Mississippi 
current of human thought, you have the unutterable 
audacity or ignorance to say that Christians invented it 
to give God a chance to rectify the mistakes of this!! 
Are these the kind of weapons you hope t<> destroy the 



THE JUSTICE OF GOD. 35 

Christian religion with ? Can yon afford thns to play 
with the crednlity of yonr readers, and with yonr own 
reputation ? Honor bright ! 

Ingersoll — " Mr. Black, however, avoids the question 
by saying : We have neither jurisdiction nor capacity to 
rejndge the justice of God." 

Comment — To state a truth is not to avoid the ques- 
tion. You avoid the question by not admitting Black's 
proposition, or disproving it. It is the' hinge on which 
the argument turns, and you should not have avoided it. 
If Mr. Black's statement is true then you are wrong in 
attempting to judge of God's justice. If his statement 
is false, then you are right in so judging. 

The statement of Mr. Black, instead of avoiding the 
question, brought it to a direct issue. His proposition 
reduced to its simplest form is this : The finite cannot 
be the measure of the infinite. God's justice is infinite ; 
the human mind is finite, hence the latter cannot be the 
measure of the former — in other words we have not the 
capacity, and for a stronger reason, not the jurisdiction 
to rejudge the justice of God. This is the clear issue 
Mr. Black made with you, but instead of meeting it 
squarely, as candor would dictate, you proceed to avoid 
it by misstating it. Thus you say : 

Ingersoll — "In other words, we have no right to 
think upon this subject." — 

Comment — This is neatly done. But it will not suc- 
ceed. Mr. Black did not say we have no right to think. 
He said we have no right to judge, and it seems to me 
that any adult whose intellect is not below the average, 
will see a difference between thinking and judging. You 
honor the truth in Mr. Black's proposition when you try 
to torture it out of shape before you attempt to answer it. 



36 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

Ingersoll — " — no right to examine the questions most 
vitally affecting human kind." 

Comment — Here you are again. This is the pettiest 
kind of verbal thimble-rigging. Mr. Black did not say 
we have no right to examine these questions. He said we 
have no right to rejudge the justice of G-od. You need 
not be told that there is a difference between examining 
and judging. I cannot believe, in view of your knowledge 
of the English language, that you changed these words 
without a purpose, even though you hold that " candor 
is the courage of the soul." 

Ingersoll — " We have simply to accept the ignorant 
statements of the barbarian dead." 

Comment — We accept neither the ignorant statements 
of the barbarian dead, nor the ignorant statements of the 
atheistic living. We are averse to accepting ignorant 
statements from any man, be he an ancient barbarian or 
modern pagan. The question between you and Mr. Black 
as to whether the finite can be the measure of the in- 
finite, is one that cannot be settled by the statements of 
anyone, ignorant or otherwise. It is a question of pure 
reason, and anyone gifted with the use of reason, who 
comprehends the meaning of the terms finite and infinite 
will know that the former cannot include the latter — in 
other words, that the finite mind has not the capacity or 
jurisdiction to rejudge the ways of the infinite intelli- 
gence. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE EXISTEXCE OE GOD — LOGIC AND LEGAL TEX DEES — 
QUEER ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 

INGEESOLL — " This question cannot be settled by 
saying that it would be a mere waste of time and space 
to enumerate the proofs which show that the universe was 
created by a pre-existent and self-conscious being. The 
time and space should have been wasted, and the proofs 
should have been enumerated. These proofs are what 
the wisest and greatest are trying to find." 

: Comment — It is true nevertheless that it would be a 
waste of time and space to reproduce those proofs that 
have never been answered. It would appear that you are 
ignorant of those proofs, but your ignorance of them 
would not justify Mr. Black in exhausting the limited 
space given him to reply to you in reprinting what you 
and every man who makes any pretensions to a knowledge 
of philosophy and theology are supposed to know. The 
wisest and greatest of mankind have known, studied and 
pondered those proofs and have been convinced by them. 
They and the world do not agree with you. It is a serious 
mistake on your part to imagine that because these proofs 
are unknown to you they are unknown to scholars in this 
line of thought, or that the "wisest and greatest" are 
trying to find them because you have not found them. 
You do yourself honor overmuch in supposing that the 
wisest and greatest are in the same boat with vou. Is it 



38 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

your misfortune or theirs that the best thinkers in ancient 
and modern times cannot see things in the light you see 
them? If you had taken Mr. Black's kind hint and 
posted yourself up in those proofs so well known in cur- 
rent philosophical literature you would have been less 
profligate of statement ; and you would have learned that 
there are many things worth knowing, not dreamt of in 
your philosophy. 

I have some advantages of Mr. Black. I am not deal- 
ing with the North American Review, and it is not in your 
power to shut me off as you did him when you wanted to 
stop. I can therefore afford to spend some space and 
time in trying to familiarize your mind with the proof of 
a supreme, self-existent and infinitely wise Being. I shall 
reproduce an argument of a philosopher for the existence 
of God. I do not deem it necessary or logically called 
for just here to do this ; but as it may prove instructive 
to you I give it. It runs in this way : 

I allow you to doubt all things if you wish, till you 
come to the point where doubt denies itself. Doubt is 
an act of intelligence ; only an intelligent agent can 
doubt. It as much demands intellect to doubt as it does 
to believe, — to deny as it does to affirm. Universal doubt 
is, therefore, an impossibility, for doubt cannot, if it 
would, doubt the intelligence that doubts, since to doubt 
that would be to doubt itself. You cannot doubt that 
you doubt, and then, if you doubt, you know that you 
doubt, and there is one thing, at least, you do not doubt, 
namely, that you doubt. To doubt the intelligence that 
doubts would be to doubt that you doubt, for without 
intelligence there can be no more doubt than belief. In- 
telligence then, you must assert, for without intelligence 
you cannot even deny intelligence, and the denial of 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 39 

intelligence by intelligence contradicts itself, and affirms 
intelligence in the very act of denying it. Doubt, then, 
as much as you will, you must still affirm intelligence as 
the condition of doubting, or of asserting the possibility 
of doubt, for what is not, cannot act. 

This much, then, is certain, that however far you may 
be disposed to carry your denials, you cannot carry them 
so far as to deny intelligence, because that would be 
denial of denial itself. Then you must concede intelli- 
gence, and then whatever is essential to the reality of 
intelligence. In conceding anything, you concede neces- 
sarily all that by which it is what it is, and without 
which it could not be what it is. Intelligence is incon- 
ceivable without the intelligible, or some object capable 
of being known. So, in conceding intelligence, you 
necessarily concede the intelligible. The intelligible is 
therefore something which is, is being, real being too, not 
merely abstract or possible being, for without the real, 
there is and can be no possible or abstract. The abstract, 
in that it is an abstract, is nothing, and therefore unin- 
telligible, that is to say, no object of knowledge or of the 
intellect. The possible, as possible, is nothing but the 
power or ability of the real, and is apprehensible only in 
that power or ability. In itself, abstracted from the real, 
it is pure nullity, has no being, no existence, is not, and 
therefore is unintelligible, no object of intelligence or of 
intellect, on the principle that what is not is not intelli- 
gible. Consequently, to the reality of intelligence, a real 
intelligible is necessary, and since the reality of intelli- 
gence is undeniable, the. intelligible must be asserted, 
and asserted as real, not as abstract or merely possible 
being. You are obliged to assert intelligence, but you 
can not assert intelligence without asserting the intel- 



40 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

ligible, and you cannot assert the intelligible with- 
out asserting something that really is, that is, without 
asserting real being. The real being thus asserted is 
either necessary and eternal being, being in itself, subsist- 
ing by and from itself, or it is contingent and therefore 
created being. One or the other we must say, for being 
which is neither necessary or contingent, or which is both 
at once, is inconceivable, and cannot be asserted or 
supposed. 

"Whatever is, in any sense, is either necessary and eter- 
nal, or contingent and created — is either being in itself, 
absolute being, or existence dependent on another for its 
being, and therefore is not without the necessary and 
eternal, on which it depends. If you say it is necessary 
and eternal being, you say it is God ; if you say it is con- 
tingent being, you still assert the necessary and eternal, 
therefore God, because the contingent is neither possible 
nor intelligible without the necessary and eternal. The 
contingent, since it is or has its being only in the necessary 
and eternal, and since what is not, is not intelligible, is 
intelligible as the contingent, only in necessary and eter- 
nal being, the intelligible in itself, in which it has its 
being, and therefore its intelligibility. So in either case 
you cannot assert the intelligible without asserting neces- 
sary and eternal being, and therefore, since necessary and 
eternal being is God, without asserting God, or that God 
is, ; and since you must assert intelligence even to deny 
it, it follows that in every act of intelligence God is as- 
serted, and that it is impossible without self-contradic- 
tion to deny his existence.* 

Ixgersoll — "Logic is not satisfied with assert ion." 

*Brownsons Quarterly Review. 



LOGIC AND LEGAL TEX DEBS. 41 

Comment — Then it is not satisfied with your assertion 
in reference to it. But you are evidently ignorant of 
what logic means, Logic as a science deals with princi- 
ples, not assertions ; and logic as an art deals with asser- 
tions only. Assertions are the subject matter on which 
it acts. It simply deduces conclusions from assertions 
or propositions called premises, and cares not whether 
these premises are true or false. Hence the very reverse 
of what you say is true. Logic is satisfied with asser- 
tions, and knows and deals with nothing else. Your 
blunder arose from your confounding reason with logic. 
Season deals with principles and truths, logic with asser- 
tions. That reason is not satisfied with assertions be- 
comes more apparent the more your article on the Chris- 
tian Eeligion is subjected to careful analysis. 

Ingeesoll — "It (logic) cares nothing for the opinion 
of the great." 

Comment— If those opinions are formulated into as- 
sertions it does care for them, because it deals with 
nothing else. You meant to say : Reason cares nothing, 
etc. This careless use of words and confounding of 
terms indicates a confused and imperfect method of 
thinking. He who thinks with clearness and precision 
will express his thought with clearness and precision, 
while a slovenly thinker leaves the reader in a state of 
chronic doubt as to what is really meant. 

Ingeesoll — " In the world of science a fact is a legal 
tender." 

Comment — Then before you can assert a legal tender 
you must demonstrate a fact. A fact must be established 
as such, before it is legal tender. Now the question be- 
tween you and the Christian is this : What are the facts ? 
The whole controversy rests on the answer to this ques- 



42 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

tion. What you offer as facts the Christian may reject 
as fallacies and sophistries, and what he offers as facts 
you may reject. It follows, therefore, that until both 
parties agree as to what are the facts, they cannot agree 
as to what is legal tender. What you intended then as a 
wise saying has no practical sense in it. But for those 
who like that sort of thing, it is about the sort of thing 
they will like. 

Ingersoll — " A fact is a legal tender." 

Comment — A counterfeit is a fact ; is it legal tender ? 
no. W T ell then a fact is not a legal tender. What is a 
legal tender ? It is a promise to pay which may not be 
worth ten cents on the dollar, but which the law compels 
you to accept when offered. Is this your idea of what 
facts are ? And do you intend the facts offered by you 
to be received in that light? If so, perhaps you are 
right. 

Ingersoll — "Assertions and miracles are base and 
spurious coins." 

Comment — If this be true, then the assertion you have 
just made is base and spurious coin. You say all asser- 
tions are base and spurious. Is it because they are as- 
sertions, or because they are false ? If all assertions are 
base and spurious, we cannot believe anything whatever 
that is asserted, simply because it is asserted. I assert 
that two and two make four. This is an assertion. Is it 
false ? It must be, if what you say is true. From this 
it appears that you again failed to say what you meant ; 
for you will certainly admit that some assertions are true 
— your own, for instance. 

Perhaps you meant to say that/«7se assertions are base 
and spurious. If so, this is on a par with your legal 
tender sophism, and involves the same amount of mean- 



QUEEK ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 43- 

ingless verbiage. The truth or fallacy of an assertion 
must be established before you can assert it to be base 
and spurious. But the truth or fallacy of an assertion 
is the question in debate. Let me illustrate : I make the 
assertion that the Christian religion is of divine origin. 
You will observe that the truth or fallacy of this asser- 
tion is the point in debate, and to assert either one or 
the other without proof, is to beg the question. This 
you do when you assert that assertions are base and spu- 
rious. 

But perhaps I have misunderstood you all this time 
You " probably think" that all assertions favoring Chris- 
tianity are base and spurious, while all those against it 
have the true ring. If you meant this you should have 
had the " courage of the soul" to say it, and not hide 
your insinuation under a meaningless, commonplace 
phrase. I notice you are fond of making curt little 
maxims, which on examination mean nothing, unless 
when they cover a fallacy, They are scattered through 
your article so liberally as to lead one to believe you in- 
tended them for argument. But : 

Ingersoll — " Miracles are base and spurious coins." 

Comment— That depends. And here I must make the 
same distinction I made in regard to assertions. If a 
miracle is a fact, it is not base and spurious. Now the 
fact or fallacy of a miracle is the point in debate. Until 
that point is settled, not by assertions, but by valid ar- 
guments, you cannot say that it is spurious, for when you 
make that assertion you simply beg the question. To 
beg the question in argument is like asking a knight or a 
castle of your opponent in a game of chess. It is a sign 
of conscious weakness. 

Ingersoll — " We have the right to rejudge the jus- 
tice even of a god." 



44 NOTES OX INGEBSOLL. 

Comment — If by "a god' 7 you mean some deity of 
heathen mythology, I cannot stop to consider it. If you 
mean the infinite Being whom Christians call God, I deny 
your right or competency to re judge his justice, for rea- 
sons which I have already given, and which I need not 
here repeat. It is sufficient to say that the finite cannot 
be the measure of the infinite. 

Ingersoll — " No one should throw away his reason — 
the fruit of all experience." 

Comment — Your purpose here is to leave the impres- 
sion that to be a Christian a man must throw away his 
reason. Man's reason is a gift of God, and God requires 
man to exercise and use it, and not throw it away, waste 
it, or abuse it. And he will one day ask him to give a 
strict account of the use he has made of it. While tell- 
ing us not to throw away our reason, you give a good il- 
lustration of how it can be thrown away. Thus you say : 

Ingersoll — "Reason is the result of all experience." 

Comment — When you make reason the result of ex- 
perience you destroy its proper entity. Experience is im- 
possible without something that experiences. What is it 
that experiences ? Reason ? No, for if reason is the r< suit 
of experience it cannot exist until after the experience has 
been completed. What then is it that experiences? 
The individual? But the individual minus reason is in- 
capable of apprehending experience. What then is it 
that experiences? There must be some being thai expe- 
riences, for experience cannot exist without a subject. 
The mind ? But mind and reason are identical. Reason 
is the mind in action. The fact is, human reason, or 
conscious mind, is that which experiences ; it is therefore 
prior to experience, and since it is prior to experience, it 
cannot be a result of it, or the fruit of it. as you would 



QUEER ORIGIN" OF HUMAN" REASON". 45 

say. Without reason experience is impossible, and there- 
fore when you make .reason the result of experience you 
throw away both reason and experience. This is the 
logical result of your proposition. Again you say : 

Ingersoll — " Reason is the fruit of all experience." 

Comment — By this " all" you mean, I suppose, the ex- 
perience of all mankind together with your own. But 
you have barred yourself from the right to benefit by the 
experience of others, for that experience can b3 made 
known to you only by assertions or propositions. Now, 
you have declared ex cathedra that assertions are base 
and spurious coins, and rejected with contempt the state- 
ments of the dead past by which alone the experience of 
the human race can be known. You have sawed off the 
limb on which you sat, and deprived yourself of all ex- 
perience except your own. 

Ingersoll — " It (reason) is the intellectual capital of 
the soul, the only light, the only guide." 

Comment — Reason is the soul or intellect itself in con- 
scious action ; hence it cannot be its own intellectual 
capital, or its only light and guide. You seem to forget 
what you have said before, namely, that reason is the re- 
sult of experience. Now, to say that reason is the only 
light and guide of the soul, and at the same time the re- 
sult of experience, is to contradict yourself. What lights 
and guides the soul while it is experiencing ? Reason ? 
No, for you have told us that reason is the result of that 
experience. A result is an effect, and an effect cannot 
be prior to its own cause. It follows, then, from your 
own definitions, that reason is not and cannot be the only 
light or guide of the soul. But even if you had not con- 
tradicted yourself egregiously, your assertion that reason 
is the only light, etc., cannot be accepted, for it is a piti- 



46 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

able begging of the whole question at issue — a denial of 
revelation as a guide to reason, and this you will see is 
the point between you and the Christian. Your state- 
ment thus cunningly assumes as proved that which you 
set out to prove. This is one of the peculiarities of your 
method in debate. It is on this account that I am under 
the necessity of analyzing almost every assertion you 
make. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS ', AND ART — THE WIFE 
AND OTHER VALUABLE PROPERTY. 

INGERSOLL— « Of course it is admitted that most of 
the Ten Commandments are wise and just." 

Comment. Most? Why this indefinite limitation. 
Is it candid to make a limitation so indefinite as to leave 
you room to dodge ? Why not specify which ones, if 
any, is not wise and just ? Christians are bound and ready 
to defend them all. Why not point out an unwise or 
unjust Commandment, that we may come to a direct 
issue ? 

Ingersoll — "In passing, it may be well enough to 
say, that the commandment ; ' Thou shalt not make unto 
thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that 
is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or 
that is in the water under the earth/ was the absolute 
death of Art, and that not until the destruction of Jeru- 
salem was there a Hebrew painter or sculptor." 

Comment — There are two assertions here. First, that 
the Commandment quoted was the absolute death of Art, 
and second, that before the destruction of Jerusalem 
there was no Hebrew painter or sculptor. The first in- 
volves a question of interpretation, the second a question 
of history. 

Now, I deny both these assertions, and hold that they 
have no foundation in fact. Here is a direct issue. 
47 



48 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

As to the Commandment, it could not have been the 
absolute death of art unless it forbid art. But it did not 
forbid or condemn art, therefore it was not the death of 
art. Was it candid or honorable in you to suppress that 
part of the Commandment which explains and makes 
clear the meaning of that which you did quote ? If you 
garbled the law in quoting it in a court of justice, would 
not the judge look upon you as an unprincipled shyster? 
Would he not be justified in disbarring you for contempt 
in trying to deceive and mislead the' court? You are 
fond of preaching candor and honor bright. Was it can- 
did or honest to leave out of your quotation that sentence 
which would have left your assertion without truth, force 
or point ? But you were determined to make your point 
even if you had to garble the law you quoted, in making 
it. The sentence you so uncandidly suppressed is this: 
"Thou shalt not adore them (i. e. idols) nor serve them." 
This clause, suppressed by you, explains the meaning of 
what goes before, showing that it was not the making of 
them, but the making gods of them, that was forbidden. 
That this is the meaning of the Commandment is evident 
from the fact that the same G-od who spoke in the First 
Commandment subsequently ordered images to be made. 
Moses explains the meaning still further when he says : 
(Exodus 20-23) "you shall not make gods of silver, nor 
shall you make gods of gold." Again the great Hebrew 
lawgiver was commanded to place two cherubim on the 
very ark in which the Commandments were kept. He 
was also commanded to make the brazen serpent. (Num- 
bers 21-6 to 8). In the description of Solomon's temple 
we read of that prince, not only that he made in the 
oracle, two cherubim of olive-tree, of ten cubits high (1 
Kings 6-23), but that '- all the walls of the temple round 



THE TEX COMMANDMENTS. 49 

about he carved with divers figures and carvings." (1 
Kings 6-29 and following verses. This whole chapter 
abounds with descriptions of works of art). When David 
imposed upon Solomon the injunction to realize his in- 
tention of building the house of the Lord, he delivered 
to him a description of the porch and temple and con- 
cluded by saying ; " All these things came to me written 
by the hand of the Lord, that I might understand all the 
works of the pattern" (1 Chronicles 28-11, 19). Thus 
we see that God not only commanded the making of 
images but that He actually exhibited the pattern. And 
yet you sniffle that He killed art. 

Now God who gave the Commandment, and the Jewish 
people who received it, had a better knowledge of its 
meaning than you dare pretend to have. David and 
Solomon understood the law, and it did not occur to 
them that they were breaking it when they made cheru- 
bim and other images for adornment and ornamentation. 

But this commandment, you say, was the death — and 
not only the death but the absolute death of art. What 
infatuation has taken possession of you to say this in the 
face of that magnificent temple of Jerusalem and all the 
work of art it contained ? Was not the temple itself a 
work of art. ? And these images, were they not works of 
art? Since the Commandment as interpreted by its 
maker — not by you — did not forbid the making of images, 
it could not have affected art, unless you claim for art the 
right to worship false gods and idols. If therefore the 
Jews were not artists you must seek the reason elsewhere 
than in this First Commandment. But if you condemn 
the Jews for not cultivating art why is it that you have 
no words of commendation for Christianity under whose 
inspiration and influence art was brought to its highest 
development ? G 



50 XOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

Ixgersoll — "Not until the destruction of Jerusalem 
was there a Hebrew sculptor or painter-" 

Comment — Well then who "sculped" the cherubim 
and other ornamentations for the temple of Jerusalem ? 
Who made the cherubim to ornament the ark of the 
covenant ? Who made the golden calf and the brazen 
serpent ? Surely, it requires all the brass of the brazen 
serpent to say in the face of all this that "there was no 
Hebrew sculptor before the destruction of Jerusalem." 

Ixgersoll — " Surely a commandment is not inspired 
that drives from earth the living canvas and the breath- 
ing stone — leaves all walls bare, and all the niches deso- 
late." 

Comme.vt — Surely the inventor of this curious crite- 
rion of inspiration deserves recognition of some kind. 
But this lachrymose ejaculation is entirely uncalled for, 
since the Commandment, when not garbled by you, does 
not forbid the living canvas or the breathing stone, fres- 
coed wall or ornamented niche. As we have seen, the 
First Commandment has nothing to do with art, one way 
or the other. But even if it did banish the. living can- 
vas, etc., from the earth, it would not follow that it is not 
inspired. Your " surely it is not inspired" is no proof 
against inspiration. One who worships reason and logic 
should exhibit more of both. 

From what you say about Art, it is evident that you do 
not know its meaning and scope. You limit it to sculp- 
ture and painting because you imagine these two forms 
of art are forbidden by the Commandment. Art is 
broader than that. I will give you a definition of art, 
which will, if you study it well, prevent you in future 
from showing your ears to quiet, thoughtful men who 
have gone someAvhat deeper than you have into philoso- 



VALUABLE PKOPERTY. 51 

pliy and theology. Art is the expression or manifestation 
of the Beautiful. " It is an appeal by symbolism to the senses. 
It treats of color and form which are direct appeals to 
vision ; letters and hieroglyphics which are an appeal to 
the intellect through the medium of sight ; vibratory 
motion which appeals to the sense of hearing — called 
music ; tangible forms which talk to the sense of feeling ; 
and combinations which appeal to the taste. 

Now, the death of Art is the destruction of all those 
methods of expression. Do you pretend to say that the 
First Commandment destroys or forbids all these methods 
of expressing or manifesting the Beautiful ? No. Well 
then the First Commandment is not the death of Art, even 
if I should grant all you claim, which of course I do not. 
Poetry is an art — and where can you find more sublime 
specimens of it than in the psalms of David, the Book of 
Job, the majestic flights of Isaiah, and the soul-stirring 
threnodies of Jeremiah ? Here we have the highest 
genius and the highest art. And yet because they did 
not daub lecherous pictures on canvas, or cut naked 
Yenuses out of stone, they were not artists. The com- 
mandment was the death of art ! — trash. 

Ingeesoll — "In the Tenth Commandment we find 
woman placed on an exact equality with other property, 
which, to say the least of it, has never tended to the 
amelioration of her condition." 

Comment — The relative nature of persons and things 
protected by law is not measured by the law that pro- 
tects them. A law may forbid murder and theft at the 
same time without placing these two crimes on the same 
plane, or on exact equality. As a lawyer you should be 
familiar with this fact. This Tenth Commandment for- 
bids to covet a neighbor's wife, and at the same time it 



52 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

forbids to covet his property. Tliis prohibition you will 
admit is wise and just when it refers to that which is 
most beloved and sacred to man. It is equally wise and 
just when it protects that which is of less value or im- 
portance to him. Now, do you pretend to say that these 
two objects cannot be at the same time forbidden with- 
out putting them on exact equality ? If the Command- 
ment had not mentioned a wife you would have taken 
advantage of the omission and held that it left the wife 
at the mercy of the profligate, or that it placed a higher 
estimate on the husband's horse or ox than on the wife 
of his bosom, or that it protected the one while it failed 
to protect the other. So, whether the command forbids 
to covet a neighbor's wife, or is silent on the subject, 
you are not satisfied. You are like the Frenchman who 
was to be hanged, neither a long nor a short rope would 
suit him. You are hard to please. 

But again : as a lawyer you should know that the dis- 
tinction between objects protected or forbidden by law is 
not to be found in the law but in the punishment in- 
flicted by the law. The civil law forbids alike the steal- 
ing of fifty cents and one hundred dollars. Does the law 
put these sums on an exact equality ? No, for it sends 
the fifty-cent thief to jail, while it sends the more am- 
bitious fellow to States' prison. In the same way the 
Jewish criminal code condemned the wife-stealer to death, 
while he who stole an ox was required to return it and 
pay a heavy fine. From the difference of punishment 
you can see that the Commandment, as understood by 
those to whom it was given, made a distinction between 
a wife and an ox, and did not place them on an " exact 
equality." 



VALUABLE PROPERTY. 53 

You argue like a man who places much confidence in 
the credulity or gullibility of his readers, and imagines 
that while a few may investigate and know the truth, the 
larger number will take his word for it and inquire no 
further. This policy shows a good knowledge of human 
nature, for the average man is not overburdened with the 
faculty of discrimination. He is apt to place too much 
confidence in the ignorant statements of that monu- 
mental bore of modern times, the roving lecturer — ad- 
mission fifty cents. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OX MURDER — CAXAAXITES — CAPTIVE MAIDENS — MA- 
RAUDIXG — LYIXG SPIRITS AXD FALSE PROPHETS. 

TNGERSOLL— " He (God) ordered the murder of 
J- millions." 

Comment — He never authorized or ordered the murder 
of any one, from Abel to Garfield. God is the author 
and giver of life, and those he places on this earth he can 
remove at his will. No man has a right to live one in- 
stant longer in this world than his Creator wills him to 
remain, be he yet unborn, or innocent or guilty. As 
creatures of God we are absolutely his, and can have no 
rights whatever as against him. To God the death of 
man is but the passing from one state of existence to an- 
other, from one department to another in the same uni- 
verse. Death is not annihilation, or reabsorption into the 
elements of matter, but a transportation from one state 
to another in which man retains his individuality and 
conscious identity as truly and really as does he who 
passes from one room to another in the same house. 
Physical death, therefore, is a trilling circumstance in 
man's immortal career. Now, he who has the absolute 
right to transpose man from one state of being to an- 
othe, has equally the right to select the method of his 
removal, whether by old age, disease, the deluge, the 
sword, or by what we call accidents. By whatever meth- 
od man is withdrawn from life's fi tf ul fever, his death is 

54 



ON MUEDEE. 55 

in pursuance of the original sentence passed on the race 
by an infinitely just Judge. This sentence awaits you, 
and your philosophy will not obtain you a stay of pro- 
ceedings or an exemption. 

But to- return. He who has the absolute right to take 
life cannot be guilty of murder in taking it, for murder 
is an unjust killing, and there is no unjust killing in the 
taking of life by him who has the absolute right to take 
it. There is no escape from this reasoning except by 
denying the absolute right, and you cannot deny this but 
by denying God's existence ; for on the hypothesis that 
he exists, he is Creator, and being Creator, the absolute 
right of dominion over his creatures necessarily follows. 
Then in the last analysis, to deny this right is to deny 
G-od's existence. But you cannot logically deny his ex- 
istence, since you say in your lecture on "Skulls" that 
you do not know whether he exists or not. 

It follows from what has been said that when Grod or- 
dered the execution of the guilty Canaanites it was not a 
command to murder. Nor was it a violation of his own 
Commandment, for it was unjust killing that he forbid, 
and the destruction of that guilty people was just be- 
cause ordered by him who had the absolute right to order 
it, whether they were guilty or not. 

I have dwelt at some length on the absolute right of 
dominion of the Creator over his creatures, because you 
harp on what you call his murders through your whole 
article. That which one has an absolute right to take at 
any and all times, one cannot be unjust in taking when 
he pleases. 

As to the Canaanites, they were guilty of death, al- 
though they were not put to death, but driven from Pal- 
estine in about the same manner that the whites are 



56 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

driving the Indians from the homes of their forefathers. 
The unparalleled wickedness and filthy abominations of 
the seven nations of Palestine, commonly called Canaan- 
it us. were such as to make their national expulsion or ex- 
termination a just punishment and a useful lesson to 
other nations. The nature of their crimes may he found 
in the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus. Read that chap- 
ter and you will understand why Jehovah held these 
beastly people in abhorrence. The Mormons and Oneida 
Communists are as pure as the driven snow in compari- 
son with them. To give the reader an idea of their in- 
credible debasement, I quote some verses from the end 
of the chapter wherein God warns the Hebrews not to 
imitate their example : 

" Defile not yourselves with any of these things with 
which all the nations have been defiled, which I will cast 
out before you. And with which the land is defiled ; the 
abominations of which I will visit ; that it may vomit out 
its inhabitants. Keep ye my ordinances and judgments, 
and do not any of these abominations. * * For all 
these detestable things, the inhabitants of the land (Ca- 
naanites, Amhorites) have done that were before you, and 
have defiled it. Beware of them lest in like manner it 
vomit you also out, if you do like things, as it vomited 
out the nation that was before you. Every soul that 
shall commit any of these abominations, shall perish 
from the midst of his people." 

These abominations are described in the first port of 
the chapter. Read it carefully that you may know the 
abominable wretches you sympathize with. 

The author of the Book of Wisdom describes some of 
the sins of those people, and justifies their punishment 
in words that I cannot do better than quote : 



OX MURDER. OV 

" Thou chastisest them that err, by little and little ; 
and admonishest them, and speakest to them, concerning 
the things wherein they offend ; that leaving their wick- 
edness they may believe in thee. For those ancient in- 
habitants of the holy land, whom thou didst abhor, be- 
cause they did works hateful to thee by their sorceries 
and wicked sacrifices, and those merciless murderers of 
their own children, and eaters of man's bowels, and de- 
vourers of blood from the midst of thy consecration ; and 
those parents sacrificing with their own hands helpless 
souls, it was thy will to destroy by the hands of our 
parents. * * Yet even those, thou sparedst as men, 
and didst send wasps forerunners of thy host, to destroy 
them little by little. Not that thou .wast not able to 
bring the wicked under the just by war, or by cruel 
beasts, or with one rough word to destroy them at once. 
But executing thy judgment by degrees thou gavest them 
a place of repentance, not being ignorant that they 
were a wicked generation, and their malice natural, and 
that their thought could never be changed. * * Nei- 
ther didst thou for fear of any one give pardon to their 
sins. For who shall say to thee : What hast thou done ? 
or who shall withstand thy judgments? or who shall 
come before thee to be a revenger of wicked men ? or who 
shall accuse thee ; if the nations perish, which thou 
hast made ? For there is no other God but thou,, who 
hast care of all, that thou shouldst show that thou dost 
not give judgment unjustly. Neither shall king nor ty- 
rant in thy sight inquire about them, whom thou hast 
destroyed. For so much then as thou art just, thou or- 
derest all things justly ; thinking it not agreeable to thy 
power to condemn him who deservest not to be punished. 
For thy power is the beginning of justice, and because 



58 NOTES ON" INQERSOLL. 

thou art Lord of all, thou makest thyself gracious to all. 
For thou showest thy power, when men will not believe 
thee to be absolute in power, and thou convincest the 
boldness of them that know thee not. But thou being 
master of power, judgest with tranquility, and with great 
favor disposest of us, for thy power is at hand when thou 
wilt. * * Thou hast made thy children to be of good 
hope, because in judging, thou givest place for repentance 
for sins. For if thou didst punish the enemies of thy 
servants, and them that deserved to die, with so great 
deliberation, giving them time and place ivhereby they might 
he changed from their wickedness .with what circumspection 
hast thou judged thy own children, * * therefore 
whereas thou chastisest us, thou scourgest our enemies 
in very many ways, to the end that ivhen we judge we may 
think on thy goodness, when we may be judged we may hope 
for thy mercy. Wherefore thou hast also greatly tor- 
mented them avIio in their life have lived foolishly and 
ungodly, by the same things which they worshipped. 
For they went astray for a long time in the ways of 
error, holding those things for gods which are the most 
worthless among beasts, living after the manner of chil- 
dren without understanding. Therefore thou hast sent 
a judgment upon them. * * But they that were 
not amended by mockeries and reprehensions, experi- 
enced the worthy judgment of Gro:l." (Wislom, Chap- 
ter xii.) 

Here we find that those people, whom you beslaver 
with your gushing sympathy, were sorcerers, murderers 
of their own children, offering them with their own 
hands in sacrifice to idols, and man-eaters. On the other 
hand we learn the merciful way in which Jehovah warned 
them and gave them time and \ plaoe for repentance. 



CAPTIVE MAIDENS. 59 

Whe'n they rejected his mercy he punished them with 
justice, and for doing this you accuse him of murder. 
Those who knowing the crimes of these people condemn 
the punishment inflicted on them are as guilty as they. 
You condemn Mormonism and Oneida communism, and 
yet you volunteer to advocate those bestial Sodomites of 
Canaan whose unnatural crimes disgraced the race to 
which they belonged, and contaminated the land which 
Grod had given them to dwell in. 

"A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind.*' 

Ixgeesoll — " He (God) gave captive maidens to grati- 
ify the lust of captors." 

CoiniESTT — If I were an infidel or an atheist zealous 
for the success of the cause, I would counsel you to be 
less reckless in your statements. Every cause, good or 
bad, suffers from injudicious advocates. The most in- 
judicious of all advocates is he who makes a baseless as- 
sertion, or an appeal to ignorance ; because he excites 
suspicion and brings discredit on the cause he advocates. 
I flatly deny the truth of your statement given above, 
and appeal to the only record that can give us any infor- 
mation on the subject, namely, the Old Testament. The 
Hebrew military laws did not abandon captive women to 
the insolence or brutality of captors. On the contrary, 
they made special provision forbidding the first familiari- 
ties of the soldier with his captives. If you study the 
twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy, verses 10 to 14, 
you will learn that the soldier was obliged to make the 
captive his wife, or to respect her person and honor. In- 
stead of tolerating that licentiousness which the customs 
and laws of other nations authorized, those laws of the 
Hebrews kept the soldier in restraint. They show that 
the Hebrews were far in advance of other nations in all 



60 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

those regulations that mitigate the horrors of war. The 
pagan nations of that time allowed every familiarity with 
captives, and afterwards they were sold as slaves, or given 
to lusts of slaves. This was strictly and specifically for- 
bidden by the Hebrew law. And yet in the face of all 
this, you have the effrontery to charge the Almighty 
with permitting the Jews to do that which he forbid, and 
which they alone of all ancient nations prohibited by 
strict and specific laws. What will honest men of com- 
mon sense think of a philosophy that has to be propped 
and bolstered up by such shameless misrepresentations of 
history ? 

Ingersoll " He (God) gave to Jewish marauders 

the flocks and herds of others." 

Comment. — Those marauders, as you please to call 
them, could not possibly have had a better title. God as 
creator of all has absolute dominion over all things, and 
against his title there is none. The right to confiscate 
property is recognized as existing in all civil society ; now 
civil society cannot possess and exercise a higher right 
than its Greator. Our government confiscated millions 
of dollars' worth of property during the late war, yet it 
never occurred to any one but an asinine philosopher 
that such confiscation was stealing. The cause that jus- 
tifies the war justifies the confiscation. 

After the battle of Shiloh I saw hundreds of wagon- 
loads of cotton passing North towards Pittsburg landing. 
It belonged to the Southern people, and the government 
had taken it and sold it to Northern speculators or ma- 
rauders, as you would call them. It was the Southman's 
flock and herd. The government had confiscated it and 
given it away for a consideration. You vindicate this 
measure, and vou are right in doing so. But on what 



LYING SPIRITS AXD FALSE PROPHETS. 61 

principle can yon justify our government in confiscating 
the property of its enemies while you condemn the same 
measure when practised by the Hebrew government? 
Confiscation is a war measure, and it is a merciful one, 
because it tends to end war. 

Ingersoll — "He (God) sent abroad lying spirits to 
deceive his own prophets." 

Comment — I will give one hundred dollars to the poor 
of this town if you or any of your disciples will make 
good your statement. I am familiar with the texts in 
Kings and Ezechiel which you probably imagine will bear 
you out, but if you carefully compare those texts with 
your statement you will find that your zeal has run away 
with your discretion, and that your hatred of your maker 
is more intense than your love for the truth. 

God abhors lying spirits, false prophets, false philoso- 
phers and deceivers of all kinds, ancient and modern, 
and yet he permits them to exist because he cannot make 
them impossible without destroying free will or human 
liberty. There were laws enacted condemning these false 
prophets and other popular seducers, but these laws were 
not enforced because the false prophets, etc., flattered 
the passions of the people, telling them pleasant things. 
They were popular lecturers in their day, and they are 
not all dead yet. 



CHAPTER IX. 

BELIGIOUS TOLERATION — FREE THOUGHT, AND 
TREASON. 

INGEESOLL— " The religious intolerance of the Old 
Testament is justified upon the ground that ' blas- 
phemy was a breach of political allegiance/ and that 
idolatry was an act of overt treason, and that 'to wor- 
ship the gods of the hostile heathen was deserting to the 
public enemy, and giving him aid and comfort.' " 

Comment — If these positions of Mr. Black are well 
taken it is difficult to see how you can escape their logical 
consequence. For you must admit that overt treason, 
breach of political allegiance and giving aid and comfort 
to the enemy are crimes that merit severe punishment. 
If you were a logician you would have known that to re- 
fute Mr. Black you should have shown that blasphemy 
and idolatry were not overt acts of treason. This you 
did not even attempt to do. Hence, so far as argument 
is concerned, Mr. Black has justified what you call the 
intolerance of the Old Testament. Is a government in- 
tolerant because it will not tolerate treason? If not, 
then the Jewish government was not intolerant, and the 
fact that God was its direct ruler does not change the 
nature of the case. Every goverrment that is worthy of 
the name must be intolerant of all those things that 
touch its supreme authority, majesty and honor. The 
Southern revolt was no more treason against the United 

62 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION. 63 

States government, than were idolatry and blasphemy 
against the Jewish government. You became a Colonel 
to assist the government to punish that attack on its su- 
preme authority, majesty and honor. What new light 
has penetrated your skull that you now defend treason 
in Judea ? Is it because God, against whom you seem to 
have a personal grudge, was the direct ruler there ? If 
you should carry out your theories of toleration to their 
logical conclusion and realize them in overt acts in this 
country you would find yourself in due time dangling 
from a gibbet. It does not seem to have occurred to you 
that it was necessary to disprove Mr. Black's statement, 
that idolatry was treason, before you could drive him 
from his position. If you grant that idolatry was trea- 
son against the Jewish state you give away your case, and 
justify the punishment which that state inflicted on the 
idolater. Ko man with an atom of sense will attempt to 
deny this. To meet Mr. Black squarely and logically you 
should have proved that idolatry was not treason, and if 
you could not do this, as most certainly you could not, 
you should have "walked up like a man" and admitted 
that the Jews were right, and not only right, but were 
bound to punish idolatry and blasphemy with death, as 
treason is punished in all times and by all nations, whether 
God is the immediate head of the government or not. 

Ingersoll — " According to Mr. Black, we should all 
have libertv of conscience except when directly governed 
by God." 

Comment — If by "liberty of conscience" you mean 
liberty to commit overt acts of treason, you should not 
need to be told that such liberty of conscience is not, and 
should not be permitted to exist anywhere, not even in 
badly-regulated lunatic asylums. 



64 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

The slave-holder's conscience told him that secession 
was right. As long as his conscience was purely specu- 
lative the government of the United States allowed him 
to amuse himself with it. But when he formulated that 
conscience of his into overt acts, such as firing on Fort 
Sumpter, the government sent Col. Ingersoll and other 
embryo Caesars down to interview and inform him that 
liberty of conscience was a good thing in its way — a 
something to keep his mind busy — but if he was such a 
consummate ass as to imagine that the United States 
government intended him to practice that liberty publicly 
he would have to readjust his ideas about it on a more 
solid basis. 

Just so with idolatry and blasphemy under the Jewish 
government. A man might be an idolater in his heart, 
and he might think " damn" to any extent, without be- 
coming amenable to the Jewish criminal code, but when 
he formulated his conscience into overt acts of treason 
the sword of Gideon was unsheathed. 

The Mormon heard of this " liberty of conscience," 
and "freedom of thought." And taking you at your 
word, and thinking that your motto of " honor bright" 
meant something, he believed he was conscience free. 
He concluded to take unto him two wives. Judge of his 
astonishment when he heard your denunciations of him. 
He concluded, as every man possessing even a suspicion 
of brains will conclude, that all your talk about liberty 
of conscience and liberty of thought is mere misleading 
twaddle. It appears that "liberty of conscience" means. 
according to you, only the right to do what you approve 
of. You condemn polygamy. Do you not mike your 
judgment the limit of the Mormon's liberty of con- 
science ? Jehovah made his judgment the limit of hi)- 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION. 65 

erty for the Jew, and you condemn Mm for it, while yon 
draw a circle of limitation around the Mormon. You 
should try to be consistent. 

Ingersoll — " In that country where God is king, lib- 
erty cannot exist." 

Comment — This is your conclusion, not Mr. Black's. 
Grant society or government, and it is of no consequence 
whether X, Y or Z is its king ; the principle of its ac- 
tion must be the same in reference to those things which 
touch its authority. 

The most perfect liberty exists where the most perfect 
government exists — that you will admit. The most per- 
fect government is that which is directed by the most 
perfect wisdom and judgment, which are attributes of the 
most perfect being only. God is the most perfect being ; 
that you must admit if you admit his existence. Then 
it follows that where God directs the government, there 
the most perfect liberty exists. By liberty I of course 
mean, the right to do right. The right or liberty to do 
wrong is claimed by no civilized government on earth 
that assumes to decide between right and wrong ; nor 
does any government admit such right in those subject 
to its authority. There are individuals of course who 
claim the liberty to do wrong, but they are comparative- 
ly few. Some of them have died suddenly and prema- 
turely by dislocation of the neck, and some others are in 
the penitentiary. Poor encouragement for disciples of 
liberty of license and heroes of free thought. 

Comment — "Within the Old Testament was no such 
thing as religious toleration." 

Comment — Certainly not, and for the very sufficient 
reason given by Mr. Black. Religious toleration meant 
liberty of treason. Mr. Black told you that idolatry was 



G6 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

treason against the state and against its recognized ruler. 
The Jewish nation could no more tolerate treason than 
any government can tolerate it. 

Ixgersoll — "Within that volume can be found no 
mercy for the unbeliever." 

Comment — If unbelief culminates in persistent trea- 
son, it finds no mercy under any government worthy of 
the name. 

Ixgersoll — " For all who think for themselves, there 
are threatening curses and anathemas." 

Commext — This I deny. Thinking for oneself is not 
forbidden. Thinking is an act of which from its nature 
government can take no cognizance. The punishment 
inflicted by the Jewish law was for overt arts. Thought 
was punished only when it was treasonable, and when 
put forth in overt act. There is a huge fallacy in all 
this cant about freedom of thought, thinking as we 
please, etc. The intellect — I mean, of course, a sane in- 
tellect — is governed by motives and principles of reason, 
not by the whims of the will. Will to think that two 
and two make five, or that parallel lines will meet, and 
* see if your reason will tolerate it. 

Ixgersoll — "Think of an infinite Being who is so 
cruel, so unjust, that he will not allow his children lib- 
erty of thought." 

Commext — It is because he is infinite that he can- 
not sanction error, idolatry, and other moral evils. Be- 
cause he is infinite he cannot permit his children to disobey 
his knoAvn will, or to reject his teachings as if he were a liar. 
The only liberty of thought which he does not allow is 
the liberty to think error, to meditate evil, to plan crime. 
Do you insist on this kind of thinking? If so, be wise 
and keep it carefully in your thought, for if you reduce 



FKEE THOUGHT. 6< 

this liberty to act it may lead to the penitentiary, where 
there are many philosophers of liberty of thought. You 
seem to be unwilling to make any distinction between 
liberty of thought and liberty of action because perhaps 
you see it would collapse your rhetorical balloon. 

Ingeksoll — " Think of an infinite God acting as the 
direct governor of a people, and yet not able to command 
their love !" 

Comment — It is indeed a subject worthy of careful 
thought. God freed that people from the bondage of 
Egypt by a series of most wonderful miracles, fed them 
for nearly half a century in the desert, gave them the 
land of Palestine to live in, and blessed them in a thou- 
sand ways, and yet he could not command their love ! 
Verily they were a stiff-necked people. This want of ap- 
preciation of the divine beneficence is one of the con- 
vincing proofs of man's original fall. 

Ingeesoll — " Think of the author of all mercy im- 
bruing his hands in the blood of helpless men, women 
and children simply because he did not furnish them with 
intelligence enough to understand his late /" 

Comment — Think of a man who is always talking 
about " honor bright," manhood, and truth, making such 
a false and groundless statement to intelligent readers. 
I have italicized the words in the above quotation which 
contain a blasphemous fallacy. On what evidence or 
authority do you assert that men, etc., were punished 
simply because they had not intelligence enough to under- 
stand the law ? What evidence have you that they did 
not understand the law ? Did those who were punished 
ever make this plea in extenuation of their crimes ? This 
calumny agaiitst your Creator and Judge is an invention 
of your own, pure and simple. It is a principle of re- 



68 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

vealed ethics that those who have not intelligence enough 
to understand the law are not bound by the law, and that 
idiots and the insane are not judged by the law. 

You quote a passage from Deuteronomy xiii., wherein 
death is decreed against those who entice others to com- 
mit idolatry, and you add : 

Ingersoll — " This is the religious liberty of the Bible." 

Comment — Now, as we have seen, idolatry was treason 
against the state. Do you mean by religious liberty the 
right to commit treason ? If so, religious liberty is in- 
compatible with social order, making all forms of gov- 
ernment impossible. We have a case in point. Major 
Andre enticed Arnold to commit treason. Was Wash- 
ington an enemy of religious liberty because he hung 
the spy ? 

Ingersoll — " If you had lived in Palestine, and if the 
wife of your bosom, dearer to you than your own soul, 
had said : i I like the religion of India better than that 
of Palestine/ it would have been your duty to kill her." 

Comment — This is not true, for the law forbid the en- 
ticing to idolatry, to acts of treason. And the mere ex- 
pression of an opinion, although it showed bad taste and 
worse judgment on the part of the wife, yet her silly say- 
ing was not what was forbidden by the law. 

Ingersoll — " If she had said : ' Let us worship the 
sun,' it was your duty to kill her.'' 

Comment — Here we have a clear case of enticing to 
treason, which is itself treason. Idolatry was treason 
against the Sovereign of the Jewish state. The laws of 
all nations punish treason with death, and we cannot see 
that it makes any difference whether the traitor be a man 
or a woman. The traitor should be removed from the 



TREASOX. 69 

body politic as you would remove a cancer from your 
jaw, your mawkish sentimentalism to the contrary not- 
withstanding. 

Ixgersoll — "Is it possible that a being of infinite 
mercy ordered a husband to kill his wife for the crime of 
having expressed an opinion on the subject of religion ?" 

Comment — The law you quoted from Deuteronomy 
says nothing about expressing an opinion on the subject 
of religion. It says : " If thy brother, thy son, thy 
daughter, or the wife of thy bosom * * entice thee 
secretly, saying : Let us go and serve other gods." It 
seems that there is something more here than the mere 
expression of an opinion on the subject of religion." 

Ixgersoll — " Has there been found upon the records 
of the world anything more perfectly fiendish than this 
commandment of Jehovah ?." 

Comment — I do not know much about the records of 
the savage world, or that savages were given to keeping 
records, but I do know that the law which punishes trea- 
son with death is to be found upon the records of all 
civilized nations on earth. 

Ixgeesoll — "This is justified on the ground that 
blasphemy was a breach of political allegiance, and idol- 
atry an act of overt treason." 

Comment — And if you were possessed of average logi- 
cal acumen you would see that until you overthrow that 
position the justification is complete. There are only 
two ways by which Mr. Black's position can be over- 
thrown. First, by denying his statement as a historical 
fact, or second, by proving that treason is not a crime, 
and should not be punished with death. You do not 
attempt either of these modes of refutation. You con- 
tent yourself with giving a half -page of the softest and 



70 NOTES OX IXGEBSOLL. 

silliest kind of gush, in which you exhibit to a remarka- 
ble degree the faculty of Goldsmith's schoolmaster who, 
although beaten, could argue still. Here is a specimen 
of your style of argument : 

Ingeesoll — " We can understand how a human king 
stands in need of the services of his people. We can un- 
derstand how the desertion of any of his soldiers weakens 
his army ; but were the king infinite in power, his 
strength would still remain the same, and under no con- 
ceivable circumstance could the enemy triumph." 

Comment — While you are understanding so many 
things it would be well to understand that God does not 
inflict punishment because he fears the loss of power, 
but because he must insist on respect and obedience to 
his supreme authority — he cannot permit himself to be 
treated as an idiot king or as a liar. You should also 
understand that the guilt of treason does not depend on 
its success. Is treason any the less criminal because it is 
committed against God ? or must he refrain from the ex- 
ercise of power to compel obedience simply because he is 
all-powerful ? 

Ingeesoll — "His strength would still remain the 
same." 

Comment — Undoubtedly, but it is not a question of 
strength, it is a question of authority. You should un- 
derstand that the strength of a king or government is 
not the measure or criterion of treason. Treason is an 
attack on authority, or the right and title to rule. In 
this, and not in its failure or success, consists its malice. 
God does not stand in need of his people, but he insists 
on obedience and respect to his supreme authority. He 
who has the right to make law has the right to insist on 
obedience to law by punishing the law-breaker. 



CHAPTER X. 

SOME GUSH — METHODS OF WARFARE — CHEEK — THE 
COLOXEL OX IXFAXTRY TACTICS, BABIES, AND DRY- 
XURSLXG. 

ING-ERSOLL— " I insist that if there is an infinitely 
good and wise God, he beholds with pity the misfor- 
tunes of his children. 7 ' 

Commext — I insist on the same, but we must distin- 
guish between misfortune and crime, misfortune and 
wickedness." 

Ixgersoll — " I insist that such a God would know the 
mists, the clouds, the darkness enveloping the human 
mind." 

Commext — He does know and takes into account 
these disadvantages in dealing with his creatures. But 
are you not a little inconsistent ? Some pages back you 
exalt the human mind, and claim for it the right to re- 
judge the justice of God, and now you deplore the clouds 
and mists and darkness that enshroud it. The highest 
wisdom as well as duty of the human mind, suffering 
under the weaknesses you deplore, is to hear the words 
of God and obey them, and not misuse the little light it 
has left it in denying his existence, or making him the 
subject of its blasphemous jests. 

Ixgersoll — " His pity, not his wrath, would be ex- 
cited by the effort of his blind children, groping in the 
night to find the cause of things." 



72 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

Comment — And yet you would make these blind chil- 
dren the judges of his justice ! God does pity those who 
grope in darkness, or who are misled by false philoso- 
phers, and in proof of it he offers them the light of his 
revelation to enlighten the night and dissipate the clouds, 
but those who shut their eyes to it and disobey his laws, 
he punishes. God requires us not only to worship him, 
but to worship him alone, and in the manner he pre- 
scribes. It is all nonsense to say that he who falls down 
and worships a cat, a rat, a crocodile, or the slimy snake that 
crawls under the grass, as the Egyptians did, intends to 
worship the infinite Being, or that such worship is ra- 
tional or worthy of God or man. 

Ingersoll — "An infinitely good Being, had he the 
power, would answer the reasonable prayer of an honest 
savage even when addressed to wood and stone." 

Comment — God is infinitely just and merciful. He 
knows the hearts of men and judges them according to 
their lights, opportunities and circumstances. It would 
be in keeping with his infinite goodness to hear the reas- 
onable prayer of the honest but mistaken savage and an- 
swer it by enlightening his mind, making known to him 
his will, and forbidding him to worship idols. If this 
savage should persist in his idolatry after being forbidden 
he would be no longer an honest savage, but a disobedi- 
ent child deserving punishment. 

Ingersoll — "The atrocities of the Old Testament, 
the threatenings, maledictions and curses of the * inspired 
book,' are defended on the ground that the >h-\\< had a 
right to treat their enemies as their enemies treated 
them." 

Comment — Here with your usual facility you confound 
and jumble together things of different natures. Mr. 



METHODS OF "WARFARE. iO 

Black defended what you call the atrocities of the Jews 
recorded in the Old Testament, on the principle recog- 
nized by all people, and nations, pagan philosophers and 
Christian apostles, that the right to exist implies the right 
to repel the opposing force that threatens destruction. 
If enemies come to conquer, a nation has a right to con- 
quer them ; if they give no quarter, they have a right to 
none ; if the death of the whole population be their pur- 
pose, it is right to defeat it by putting them all to the 
sword if it be necessary. These principles are self-evi- 
dent, and are recognized by all nations, and practised by 
all except Christian nations, and if the latter do not 
practice them it is because the benign influence of Chris- 
tianity has refined the sentiments and softened the 
harsher features of man's nature, in which, how r ever, some- 
thing of the savage and the ghoul always remains. 

As to the threatenings, maledictions, etc., they are de- 
fended on very different grounds, although you pretend 
to ignore the fact for the purpose of placing your able 
opponent in a false position. God is the Creator and Su- 
preme Killer of the universe and of all men. As such, 
man owes him allegiance and obedience. The threaten- 
ings and maledictions are for those who disobey, for 
traitors, blasphemers and idolaters. The threating, etc., 
are only the formal announcements of punishments 
which will be inflicted on the transgressor. Our ow r n 
government threatens death to the murderer and im- 
prisonment to the thief. The form of threat may be dif- 
ferent, but the substance is the same. These threats 
have no terrors for the law-abiding citizen. 

Mr. Black in his reply to you said : " In your treatment 
of hostile barbarians you not only may lawfully, you must 
necessarily, adopt their mode of warfare : if they give no 



74 NOTES OX INGEBSOLL. 

quarter, they are entitled to none/' etc. With your usual 
" candor" you evade the principle involved in this propo- 
sition. If the principle is true, it is true for all, both 
Christian and pagan. If it is false or unjust or barbar- 
ous, you should have shown it to be so. This was the 
only course left to you as a logician. You do not at- 
tempt to do this, but try to meet it in this way : 

Ixgersoll — " For one who follows the Master who said 
that when smitten on one cheek you must turn the other, 
and again and again enforced the idea that you must 
overcome evil with good, it is hardly consistent to declare 
that a civilized nation must of necessity adopt the warfare 
of savages." 

Comment — And this is the only reply to your oppo- 
nent's self-evident proposition ! Let us examine it, such 
as it is. First, then, the Master did not say. as you re- 
port him, that when smitten on one cheek you must turn 
the other, or that you must overcome evil with good. He 
recommended his followers individually to return good 
for evil, but he did not forbid them to repel unjust ag- 
gresion by exercising the necessary force, nor did hi 1 in- 
tend his children to be spittoons and footballs for the 
rest of mankind. Neither did he intend that Christian 
peoples or governments should lodge murderers, thieves 
and savages in palaces and feed them on chicken pie. He 
meant that as individuals we should be kind, patient, for- 
bearing, charitable and forgiving. He did not mean that 
nations as such should be so weak or imbecile as to fail 
to maintain their own existence, dignity and authority. 
Nations, however, do sometimes overcome evil by good — 
that is, by a good thrashing, judiciously administered to 
their enemies. Evil-doers, murderers and thieves are 
overcome by good when the Law and punishment are 
properly applied. 



IXFAXTEY TACTICS. 7o 

Ixgersoll — " It is hardly consistent (in a follower of 
the Master) to declare that civilized nations must of neces- 
sity adopt the warfare of savages.'' 

Comment — Do yon imagine that when your opponent 
said this, he meant the details or incidents of war ? Do 
you believe he intended that we must of necessity throw 
away our Eemington rifles, take to bows and arrows, and 
go to wearing breech-clouts and eating dog when fighting 
Indians ? Your opponent distinctly stated what he 
meant by " mode of warfare," when he said : " If the 
enemy come to conquer you, you may conquer them : if 
they give no quarter, they are entitled to none ; if the 
death of the whole population be their purpose, you may 
defeat it by exterminating theirs." You do .not deny or 
refute this position, but you pretend to believe he meant 
ravishment for ravishment, mutilation for mutilation, 
scalping for scalping, baby-braining for baby-braining. 
This gave you an opportunity for a display of your de- 
scriptive powers, and it must not be lost. Speaking of 
braining babes reminds me that infants stand you to good 
purpose, and are made to do considerable duty in all your 
writings and lectures. You trot them out on all occa- 
sions, and in all conditions of deshabille. Those infants 
waddle, and crawl, and so forth, through your article so 
promiscuously as to remind one of a foundling asylum 
with yourself as peripatetic dry nurse in ordinary. By the 
w r ay, were you not once a colonel of the infantry ? The 
old soldier loves to dwell on the reminiscences of the past. 
But heaven help you if those infants ever live to take re- 
venge for your worse than Herodian cruelty. When you 
want to reason with men on great questions, you should 
send the children to the nursery with orders to have them 
well supplied with what the old Dutch woman used to 



76 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

call bread and milk "poultice." This will keep them in 
good condition until you want to trot them out again in 
your next lecture on Chritisanity. 

Ixgeesoll — "Is it possible that in fighting, for in- 
stance, the Indians of America, if they scalp our soldiers 
we should scalp theirs ?" 

Comment — Civilized nations look more to the killin'g 
than to the manner of it, because they understand that 
victory depends more on the number killed than on the 
method of killing. This knowledge gives the civilized 
nation the advantage over the savage. A soldier who 
pays strict attention to business during battle will send 
ten Indians to the happy hunting-ground for every scalp 
that is taken. To stop to take a scalp is to lose precious 
time ; and this is the reason, the only reason, why the 
soldier should prefer his own tactics to those of the say- 
age. If experience proved that scalping would produce 
greater intimidation on the mind of the savages and cause 
them to stop their aggression and offer terms of peace 
and guarantees for good behavior in future, it would be 
good generalship, good policy and good mercy to throw 
aside the rifle and take to scalping as soon as possible. 
Civilized people go to war to make peace. If that peace 
can be procured quicker by taking a few seal} is than by 
taking lives, it should be done without hesitation. It is 
merely a question of policy as to the conduct of the war. 
to bring it to a speedy termination. As long as the In- 
dian actually loses by his scalping tactics it is wise to 
leave to him that field of enterprise. 

Ixgeesoll — If they kill the babes in our cradles must 
we brain theirs?" 

Comment — Here they are again — yes. by all means 
brain them, tear them limb from limb, salt them, ship 



BABIES, AND DBY-XUBSIXG. 77 

them to the Cannibal islands, make them read your arti- 
cle on the Christian Eeligion, or your lecture on " Skulls" 
— do anything with them to keep them from muddling 
your brains when you are reasoning with men on subjects 
that require all your attention. 

Ixgersoll — "If they should take our captives, bind 
them to trees, and if their squaws fill their quiver- 
ing flesh with sharpened fagots and set them on fire, that 
they may die clothed in flame, must our wives, our mothers 
and our daughters follow their fiendish example ?" 

Commext — No, and for several reasons. There is a 
cheaper and quicker method of getting rid of those fiend- 
ish squaws. It is much easier to shoot them on the spot 
than to pack off to the wilderness of the far west " our 
wives, mothers and daughters" to stick sharpened fagots 
into them. Civilization, among other things, teaches us 
the science of economy, that when killing must be done, 
it should be done quickly and cheaply, that the burden 
of the tax-payer may not be increased more than neces- 
sary. 

Let me now suppose a case. A hundred of " our cap- 
tives" are about to be bound, to undergo the death- tor- 
ture inflicted by these squaws. The sharpened fagots are 
ready. Now, if the braining of an Indian babe would so 
terrorize these maternal squaws as to cause them to desist 
from their wicked purpose would the braining of that in- 
fant be barbarous ? Put yourself in the place of one of 
those trembling captives and answer. Will you save the 
lives of those hundred captives by taking one life ? If 
you think on this for a few moments you will understand 
what your opponent meant when he said : " We must of 
necessity adopt their mode of warfare," 



78 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

Ixgersoll — "Is this the conclusion of the most en- 
lightened Christianity ?" 

Comment — Yes, sir ; and the conclusion is of the most 
enlightened common sense, too. Life is practical, it is 
neither poetry nor effeminate philosophy. The passions 
of human nature, civilized or barbarous, make stern al- 
ternatives necessary, and lugubrious cant will not change 
man's nature or the necessities that arise from it. If 
those fiendish squaAvs had lived in Palestine in the days 
of Josue, and had been put to the sword by the Jews, 
you would have accused the latter of murder and made 
God an abettor of the crime. Much depends on the 
point of view from which we look at a thing. 



CHAPTER XL 

AVARS — SLAVERY — SOME OF THE COLONEL'S MISREP- 
RESENTATIONS. 

INGERSOLL— " Mr. Black justifies the wars of ex- 
termination and conquest because the American peo- 
ple fought for the integrity of their own country, fought 
to do away with the infamous institution of slavery, fought 
to preserve the jewels of liberty and justice for themselves 
and for their children.'' 

Comment — I submit this ebullition of eloquence to the 
reader for the purpose of informing him that it is a mis- 
representation of Mr. Black, a misrepresentation which it 
is hard to imagine to have been accidental or uninten- 
tional. It is not true that your opponent justifies wars of 
extermination because the American people fought for the 
integrity of their country. Here is the way he justifies war 
of extermination : " If they (the enemy) come to conquer 
you, they may be conquered by you; if they give no quar- 
ter, they are entitled to none; t if the death of your whole 
population be their purpose, you may defeat it by exter- 
minating theirs." You could not have been ignorant of 
this principle, for you quoted these very words in your 
article. Hot did he justify wars of conquest because the 
American people fought for the integrity of their country. 
According to Mr. Black, you said : "A war of conquest is 
simply murder." To meet this statement of yours, he 
said : " To show how inefficacious, for all practical pur- 

79 



80 XOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

pose, a mere sentiment is when substituted for a principle, 
it is only necessary to recollect that Mr. Ingersoll is him- 
self a warrior who stood not behind the mighty men of 
his tribe when they gathered themselves together for a 
war of conquest. He took the lead of a regiment as eager 
as himself to spoil the Philistine, 'and out he went 
a-coloneling.' " As you do not seem to have understood 
your opponent's arguments, I will put it in a more simple 
form. It was what is called an argumentum ad hominem, 
and syllogistically stands thus : 

According to Mr. Ingersoll, "A war of conquest is sim- 
ply murder." 

But the war with the South was a war of conquest. 
Therefore, the war against the South was simply murder. 
Now Mr. Ingersoll participated in that war, therefore Mr. 
Ingersoll was a party to the crime of murder. 

This was your opponent's argument in logical form. 
You evidently saw its force. You could not extricate 
yourself except by misrepresentation, and you did not 
hesitate a moment. Therefore yon said : " Mr. Black 
justifies the wars of extermination and conquest, because 
the American people fought for the integrity of their own 
country." 

You perpetrated this misrepresentation to make a way 
to escape from the trap in which you were caught, and to 
afford you a field for a little cheap sentimental gush about 
"slavery" and the "jewels of liberty", hoping with the 
instinct of the cuttle-fish you might get away in the 
muddiness you had created. But my dear sir, it will not 
do, for society is not entirely made up of fools. Our war 
with the South was a war of conquest, for a war of con- 
quest is a war to conquer and that is what we meant 
when we sent armies to the South. If conquest is murder 



WARS — SLAVERY. 81 

then you are guilty of murder in proportion to your im- 
portance in that war. But you have said a war of con- 
quest is simply murder. Then according to the adaman- 
tine rules of logic you are simply a murderer. That is 
where your opponent landed you. 

You justify the war with the South by saying that it 
was to maintain the integrity of the country, etc. The jus- 
tification is complete ; but what follows from it ? Why 
it follows that wars of conquest are sometimes justifiable, 
which is the very thing you denied when you said that " a 
war of conquest is murder." When you said that, your 
mind was on the Jew ; you wanted to lay down a princi- 
ple that would surely condemn him and his G-od, and you 
did not see that you were making a murderer of yourself. 
Ex parte philosophy is poor philosophy. You are a stu- 
dent of the infidel philosophers of the last and present 
century, but you have not caught their genius or compre- 
hended their bulk. You take their points here and there 
and depend for the rest on your wit and faculty of drol- 
lery. Men laugh with you or at you, but after all life is 
a serious affair and when the play is over the clown is the 
first to be forgotten. 

Ixgersoll — "Not satisfied with having slavery in this 
world, Mr. Black assures us that it will last through 
eternity." 

Commext — There is but one reply to this. It con- 
sists of a vigorous English word of ' three letters. It is 
sufficient to say that Mr. Black never assured us of any- 
thing from which such an inference could be drawn. On 
what principle of moral rectitude do you justify the gross 
misrepresentation? Certainly not on that divine law 
which forbids you to bear false witness against your 
neighbor. If you had said the above under oath would 

K 



82 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

it not have been perjury ? Did yon say it in view of the 
fact that yon had made arrangements to prevent your op- 
ponent from replying to yon ? 

Ingersoll — " And that forever and forever inferiors 
must be subordinate to superiors." 

Comment — This Mr. Black did say, but it is very dif- 
ferent from the assurance you attributed to him just 
now. To say inferiors must always be subordinate to 
superiors, is simply to say that the inferior must always 
be inferior to the superior, which is a self-evident truth. 
You should not need to be told that to be subordinate 
does not mean to be enslaved. The soldier is subordin- 
ate to his superior officer, but he is not his slave. To 
say that your intellect is subordinate or inferior to that 
of Moses, St. Paul, Napoleon, Xewton or Milton is nol 
to make a slave of you. 

Ingersoll — " Who is the superior man ?" 

Comment — He who does not lie, or misrepresent, or 
blaspheme his Maker, is morally superior to him who 
does. 

Ingersoll — "According to Mr. Black, he is superior 
who lives on the unpaid labor of the inferior." 

Comment — Here you are again disregarding that law 
which requires us to make our words correspond to the 
truth. It is not at all pleasant to be constantly impeach- 
ing your veracity, but your wanton use of language makes 
it necessary. Your opponent said nothing of the kind. 

Ixgersoll — " With me, the superior man is one who 
uses his superiority in bettering the condition of the in- 
ferior." 

Comment — Here you admit the fact of inferiority and 
superiority, and therefore subordination. The man who 



SUPEEIORITY. 83 

uses his superiority must be superior prior to its use. Ac- 
cording to your own words, the superiority is a fact prior to 
the use of it. Therefore his superiority does not depend on 
the use of it. Now, as the use of it in bettering the condi- 
tion of the inferior is subsequent to the superiority, it can- 
not be the note or criterion by which superiority is affirmed. 
To do good to others is a sign of moral superiority, but not 
the reason of it. If to do good were the reason of supe- 
riority, all men could be superior by a mere act of the 
will, but superiority is a fact prior to the act of the will, 
and therefore independent of it. This definition, then, 
like most of your definitions, means nothing when an- 
alyzed. 

Ingersoll — "The superior man is strength for the 
weak." 

Comment — Then h e is superior because he is stronger, 
and he is good because he uses that strength to assist the 
weak. Here again the superiority is prior to the use of 
it, and therefore the use of it is not the criterion of it. 
You confound superiority with goodness. The ability to 
help the weak constitutes superiority ; the actual helping 
of the weak is a sign of goodness. 

Lstgersoll — The superior man "is eyes for the blind." 

Comment — His superiority does not consist in seeing 
for the blind, but in his ability to see. His disposition 
to see for the blind is evidence of his goodness. I note 
these small points to show that you are not an adept in 
the proper use of words, and that your definitions are 
untrustworthy. 

Ingersoll — "For my part, I would rather be the slave 
than the master." 

Comment — For my part, I would rather be the master 
than the slave, for being the master, I would have it in 



84 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

my power to free the slave and cease to be the master. 
He who would prefer weakness to strength or the power 
of doing good when he has the choice is an intellectual 
imbecile or a consummate hypocrite. He who would pre- 
fer to be a slave has the instincts of a slave. It is more 
manly to will to be the master with the power of manu- 
mission, that by a voluntary act of the will one could 
reach the helping hand to the lowly and unfortunate 
and raise them to freedom and equality. Perhaps, in 
view of the proneness of man to domineer and play 
the tyrant, it would be better to be neither the slave nor 
the master. 

Ixgersoll — "Any man man who helps another to gain 
and retain his liberty is superior to any infallible God 
who authorized slavery in Judea." 

Comment — Then why do you not advocate the throw- 
ing open of our prison doors that the murderers and 
thieves cruelly shut up there may gain and retain the lib- 
erty they sigh for? Ah! that would be dangerous. 
Well then it is not always right to help others gain and 
retain their liberty. It is hard for you to say anything 
without saying too much or too little. You are fond of 
making general propositions, but they are dangerous tools 
and should be handled with care. 

Ixgersoll — "According to Mr. Black, there will be 
slavery in heaven," 

Comment — I must again call your attention to that 
divine law which puts a discount on false witnesses. 
Your opponent never said anything that justifies your 
statement. Whatever else you may be you are certainly, 
not a Christian. 

Ixgersoll — "If some good republican would catch 
Mr. Black, ' incorporate him into his family, tame him 



the colonel's misrepresentations. 85 

teach him to think, and give him a knowledge of the true 
principles of human liberty and government, he would 
confer on him a beneficent boon.' " 

Comment. — Why did you not catch him and teach him 
when you had a chance ? Your opponent could retort 
thus : If some good Christian would catch Mr. Ingersoll, 
teach him to think a little deeper than the surface, give 
him a knowledge of the true principles of probity, impart 
to him a proper sense of the importance of veracity, and 
induce him to forego buffoonery when dealing with great 
questions, he would confer on him a most beneficent 
boon. 

Ingersoll — " Slavery includes all other crimes. It is 
the joint product of the kidnapper, pirate, thief, mur- 
derer and hypocrite." 

Comment — How does it include all other crimes if it be 
the joint product of them ? A product is an effect. If 
slavery is a product of crimes it cannot include those 
crimes ; for to include them it must exist prior to them, 
and if it existed prior to them it cannot be a product of 
them. You should not contradict yourself. It shows 
that you have a bad memory or that there is a screw loose 
-in your logical machine. 

Ingersoll — " To lacerate the naked back, to sell wives, 
to steal babes, to breed blood-ho.unds, to debauch your 
own soul — this is slavery.*' 

Comment — Xo, it is poetry, poor poetry of course, but 
nevertheless poetry, for poetry is a product of the im- 
agination. You do not seem to understand the meaning 
of the word. Consult Webster's Dictionary or your law 
books or any books that pretend to give definitions of 
things, and you will find that the definition of slavery 
given by vou is not found in any of them. You may find 



80 NOTES OX INGEKSOLL. 

something like it in the frothy ravings of fanatics or the 
rhapsodies of poets, hnt when pure reason is appealed to 
we must not heed the effervescences of fanatics and poets. 
To lacerate the naked back is a cruelty or a punishment 
incident to, but not confined to the condition of slavery. 
To sell wives is a sin common to human society in all its 
stages, and not peculiar to slavery. To breed blood 
hounds is no more wrong than to breed canary birds or 
poodles, and as to debauching your soul, that is done with 
great facility where slavery is unknown except in name. 
Then slavery is none of these, although all of them may 
be incident to that social condition. 

Ixgersoll — " This is what Mr. Black believes in." 
Comment — You are forgetting the commandment 
again. Your opponent believes in nothing of the kind, 
and you know it. 



CHAPTEB XII. 

LIBERTY — POLYGAMY — ROUSSEAU'S OPINION OF INFIDEL 
PHILOSOPHERS. 

INGEBSOLL — " With me, liberty is not merely a 
means — it is an end." 

Comment — This is too vague. We are all in favor of 
liberty, as we understand it, but we do not agree as to 
what it is or ought to be. It is a foolish loss of time to 
caw over the word until we have a common idea or under- 
standing of the thing. Do you mean by the word, the 
liberty G-uiteau exercised, or that of the Nihilists or that 
of the Mormons or that of the thief, the robber or the 
murderer ? All these appeal to liberty as vociferously as 
you do. Do you not see that this word " liberty" must 
be defined and limited — in other words, that it must be- 
come a known quantity before it can become a legitimate 
object of debate. If there is anything thoroughly detested 
and abhored by logicians it is a word, or the use of a word, 
that has no fixed, clear and clean cut meaning to it. You 
use this word with what Shakespere would call " damnable 
iteration," and in all your multifarious uses of it you have 
never, so far as I have seen, given a definition of it. 

Ingersoll — " Without that word all other words are 
empty sounds." 

Comment — And that word without a definition — a 
clear and fixed meaning, intelligibe and comprehensible 
to all in common, is the emptiest and most misleading 



88 XOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

sound that ever echoed in time and space. It is a pet 
word of fanatics, fools and philosophers so called. It 
is like a piece of gum elastic, short or long, at the will of 
him who fingers it. " Oh, Libert}' !" said Madame Roland, 
as she was carted to the guillotine, "what crimes are com- 
mitted in thy name."' The Christian loves liberty as dearly 
as you do. He would soar from planet to planet and 
from star to star and drink in the immensity of the uni- 
verse. He would dive into the centre of our world and 
know its secrets. He would penetrate to the ultimate 
molecule of matter and know its essence. He would in- 
trovert himself and know the mystery of his own being, 
but the liberty to do these things evades his grasp as the 
ever-receding rainbow eludes the grasp of the innocent 
child who hopes to bathe his dimpled fingers in its rays 
by crossing over a field or two. The Impossible stands 
watch on the limits of his liberty and cries ' halt" when 
he even thinks to go beyond his sphere. 

As there are fixed laws of matter, so there are are fixed 
laws of mind.' The intellect is governed in its movements 
by the laws of its action, and when it acts in defiance of 
those laws, experts call it insanity. Besides the physical 
and the intellectual, there is a moral world. Man is the 
link between these three worlds because he partakes of the 
nature of all of them, and he is the only being who does. 
As a physical being man is subject to the law of physical 
nature, as an intellectual being he is subject to the laws of 
mind, and, by analogy, as a moral being he is governed 
by the inflexible laws of morals, and if he acts in defiance 
of these laws theologians call it sin. Sin in the moral 
world is what insanity is in the intellectual world. There 
are then three laws that act in parallels on man — the 
physical, the intellectual and the moral, and all are equal- 



POLYGAMY. 89 

ly binding. The two former bind him in such away that 
he has no liberty whatever, and therefore he is in no way 
responsible for their results. The moral law remains, and 
it is to this law alone that every sane individual is respon- 
sible, for it is through and by this law only that man can 
possibly antagonize God's will as intellect against intellect. 
Man then is no more free in the moral order than he is 
free in the physical or intellectual order. The difference 
is only this i he has it in his power to confuse the moral 
order, to make discord. To do this is to antagonize 
God's will, and to do this is to sin, and in this consists all 
moral evil. 

Ixgersoll — "We are informed by Mr. Black that 
polygamy is neither commanded nor prohibited in the Old 
Testament — that it is only discouraged. It seems to me 
a little legislation on that subject might have tended to 
its discouragement. But where is this legislation ?" 

Comment — In your first article on the Christian re- 
ligion you said that the Bible upheld polygamy as the 
highest form of virtue. Your opponent met your assertion 
with a denial that the Bible so held or taught. Here a 
direct issue was made, a question of veracity raised. And 
how did you meet it ? Did you stand by your statement 
and proceed to prove it ? Not at all ; you reply by say- 
ing that the Bible did not legislate against it. This is an 
admission that your statement could not be sustained — a 
raising of the white flag. 

Ixgersoll — " In the moral code (of the Old Testament) 
not one word is found on the subject of polygamy." 

Comment — Then why did you say that the Bible 
taught polygamy as the highest form of virtue ? If you 
look in Genesis, Chapter II, Verse 24, you will find the f ol- 



90 NOTES OS INGEKSOLL. 

lowing words : "Therefore shall a man leave his father 
and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife (not wives), 
and they shall be two in one flesh.'' This is the law in the 
case. This one text is sufficient to upset all your talk 
about the Bible teaching polygamy. 

But on what principle do you condemn polygamy? 
Christians say and believe it is wrong because God lias 
forbidden it. But by what right do you say it is wrong ? 
You ignore God and teach " if there is anything of value 
it is liberty. Liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine 
of life; without it the world is a prison and the universe an 
infinite dungeon. Liberty is not only a means — it is an 
end. Without that word, all other words are empty 
sounds." Now, in the light of this doctrine of liberty, 
how do you dare to obtrude yourself and your notions be- 
tween any man and woman ? By what right do yon limit 
a woman in her selection of a man, even though that man 
be the husband of other wives ? If liberty is what yon 
say it is, why do you persist in playing Paul Pry and in- 
serting your nose into other people's business? Deny 
God and assert unlimited liberty and where is the wrong 
in polygamy ? Why should not a man have all the wives 
he wants if there is no God to forbid it and no woman to 
refuse ? If man is only an animal destined to perish like 
the beast of the forest, why should he not follow his in- 
stincts as the other beasts do ? You rob man of every 
reason for self-denial, rob him of his immortal soul and 
his God, reduce him to the level of the beast and then 
try to govern him by frothy sentimentalism ! Eliminate 
Christian teaching and divine revelation from human 
thought, and where is the wrong in polygamy? Find a 
principle outside of revelation that forbids it. There is 
none. Take God away, and his moral law, and there is 



POLYGAMY. 91 

no reason left why we should not exercise every passion 
and faculty we possess to its fullest extent. If men do 
not use this unlimited liberty which you preach, it is 
because G-od's Moral Code permeates Christian thought, 
and makes a healthy public opinion which governs even 
those who deny that code. It is this healthy Christian 
sentiment you appeal to when you condemn polygamy. 
You steal the weapons of Christians to combat that 
which cannot be combatted by your infidel principles. 

Ixgeesoll — " All languages of the world are not suffi- 
cient to express the filth of polygamy." 

Commext — Until you produce argument for this state- 
ment, your opinion is no better than that of the Mormon, 
the Turk or the Hindoo. In fact the opinion of these is 
preferable since they have had experience. Your idea is 
derived from Christian teaching by which you are uncon- 
sciously influenced. In opposing polygamy from an in- 
fidel point of view you have no right to make use of that 
popular sentiment or judgment which is the result of a 
religion you repudiate. Having rejected the Christian 
religion you cannot consistently or logically make use of 
its weapons in opposing polygamy. You cannot appro- 
priate the triumphs of Christianity as victories of infidel- 
ity or unenlightened human reason. If Christians are 
disposed to accept your statement it is on account of 
their convictions founded on Christian teaching, and not 
because of any argument you have or can produce from 
an infidel point of view against polygamy. 

Ixgeksoll — "It (polygamy) makes man a beast and 
woman a slave." 

Commext — Here again you appeal to a sentiment or 
public opinion which is produced by and founded on 
Christian principles which you reject. This is illogicaL 



92 X0TES OX IXGEESOLL. 

Your infidel position requires you in opposing polygamy 
to use arguments that would convince a Turk or a Hin- 
doo. But polygamy makes a man a beast, you say. Then 
it is as bad but no worse than your modern infidel phil- 
osophy. This philosophy makes man a beast by denying 
the immortality of his soul and asserting that he is evol- 
ved from the monkey or protoplasm. If he is a descen- 
dant of the monkey or the goat where is the impropriety 
of his imitating the propensities of his ancestors. You 
tell him there is nothing above or beyond him, neither a 
God nor a future. Why then should he aspire when 
there is no object worthy of his aspirations ? You point 
to the oyster or to the libidinous ourang-outang, as his 
origin, and tell him his future is a blank. Why then 
should he curb his passions or limit his impulses ? Is it 
worth the effort? Y^ou make man a beast when you 
make his origin and destiny the same as that of the beast. 
Polygamy can do no more than this. And if man is a 
beast and there is no future, what is to prevent him from 
following the instincts of his animal nature ? Reason ? 
Reason would forbid polygamy if it can be shown to 
reason that there is anything in it contrary to the first 
principles of nature. By first principles of nature I mean 
the object, end and purpose of marriage, the continuance 
of human life on earth, etc. Does Polygamy antagonize 
any of these objects? If you prove it does you will have 
proved that it is contrary to reason — not till then. 

Ingersoll — "Certainly, Jehovah had time to instruct 

Moses as to the infamy of polygamy." 

Comment — There is no sense in this except on the 
assumption that you know more about the subject than 
Jehovah — that your crude notions of virtue and propriety 
should govern his actions. 



LXFIDEL PHILOSOPHERS. 93 

Rousseau, au infidel like yourself, but an honester and 
abler man, has given a description of the class of phil- 
osophers to which you belong, and it is highly worthy of 
attention, just here. He says : 

••I hare consulted our philosophers, I have perused 
their books, I have examined their several opinions, I 
have found them all proud, positive and dogmatizing, 
even in their pretended scepticism, knowing everything, 
proving nothing, and ridiculing one another, and this is 
the only point in which they concur, and in which they 
are right. Daring when they attack, they defend them- 
selves without vigor. If you consider their arguments, 
they have none but for destruction. Where is the phil- 
osopher who, for his own glory, would not willingly 
deceive the whole human race ? Where is he who, in the 
secret of his heart, proposes any other object than his 
own distinction ? Provided he can raise himself above the 
commonality, provided he can eclipse his competitors, he 
has reached the summit of his ambition. The great 
thing for him is to think differently from other people. 
Among believers he is an atheist, among atheists he is a 
believer. Shun, shun then those who, under pretense of 
explaining nature, sow in the hearts of men the most 
dispiriting doctrines, whose scepticism is far more affirm- 
ative and dogmatical than the decided tone of their 
adversaries. Under pretense of being themselves the only 
people enlightened, they imperiously subject us to their 
magisterial decisions, and would fain palm upon us for the 
true causes of things the unintelligible systems they have 
erected in their own heads ;, whilst they overturn, destro}^ 
and trample under foot all that mankind reveres, snatch 
from the afflicted the only comfort left them in their 
misery, from the rich and great the only curb that can 



94 NOTES OX INGEESOLL. 

restrain their passions ; tear from the heart all remorse 
of vice, all hopes of virtue, they still boast themselves 
benefactors of mankind. 'Truth' they .say. 'is never 
hurtful to man/' — I believe that as well as they : and the 
same, in my opinion, is proof that what they teach is not the 
truth.'' — Rousseau, as quoted by Gandolphy in his defence 
of the Ancient Faith. 

This quotation is somewhat long, but it is so true, so 
apt to the present occasion that I have given it place 
here. You infidels have not changed much since Rous- 
seau's time, and his description fits you so perfectly that 
one might imagine he had you and your class in his 
mind's eye when he penned the above eloquent and truth- 
ful passage. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

WOMAN'S EIGHTS — MOTHERHOOD — WOMAN'S CONDITION" 
AMONG JEWS AND PAGANS — SOME OF ME. INGER- 
SOLL'S MISSTATEMENTS, ETC., 

Ingersoll — " Where will we find in the Old Testament 
the rights of wife, mother and daughter defined ?" 

Comment — They are found in the warp and woof of 
the whole book. But before particularizing it is necess- 
ary to know what you mean by these "rights" and if 
your notions on the subject are correct. "What you may 
affirm as "rights" I may deny. Until these rights are 
determined rightly and independently of your or my 
sentiments or feelings, the question as to what the Bible 
says on the subject canuot be intelligently discussed. 

Ingersoll — "Even in the New Testament she (woman) 
is told to 'learn in silence and all subjection.' " 

Comment — Most excellent advice for man, woman and 
child. How can you learn otherwise ? Would you have 
the learner pert and impertinent ? 

According to the Christian idea, the husband and wife 
are two in one flesh. They are united by an intimate 
and mutual love in God, and should edify each other in 
peace, in fidelity and mutual support. The husband is 
the head of the wife, whom he should love, esteem and 
respect as himself, and protect. The wife is, within the 
circle of her duties, at the side of the man, not subject 

95 



06 XOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

to him as the child is subject to its father, or as the slave 
to the master, but as the mother, side by side with 
the father, having, no less than he, sacred and im- 
presciptable rights. But as in every company or corpo- 
ration it is necessary that some hold superior rank and 
authority that order and peace may prevail, so in that 
association of man and woman called marriage, in which 
the parties are bound one to the other, there must be a 
superior, while each according to rank has necessities, 
duties and rights. The woman thus raised above that 
condition of absolute subjection and low esteem which 
she occupies outside of Christendom, takes honorable and 
imposing rank by the side of her husband. Neverthe- 
less, she is in certain respects subject to his authority. 
She should, according to Christian law, obey her husband 
as the superior, not as if in slavery, but freely, in the 
same way that the Church obeys Christ, her head. A 
loving, pious, moral, interior, laborious life is the glory 
of the woman. The duties of the husband are described 
by St. Paul : " But yet neither is the man without the 
woman : nor the woman without the man in the Lord. 
For as the woman is of the man, so also is the man by 
the woman : but all things of God." (I. Cor. 11, 12.) 
Again : " Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved 
the Church, and delivered himself up for it. * * So 
also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. 
He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man 
ever hateth his own flesh : but nourishethandcherisheth 
it, as also Christ doth the Church. Because we are mem- 
bers of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this 
cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall 
cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. 
* * Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular 



MOTHERHOOD. 97 

love his wife as himself." (Ephesians y. 25 to 33.) 
There are the passages that have liberated woman. 

Lstgersoll — "According to the Old Testament, woman 
had to ask pardon, and had to be purified for the crime 
of having borne sons and daughters." 

Comment — No race on earth ever held motherhood in 
higher esteem than the Jewish race. This you must have 
known unless you are utterly ignorant of the history of 
that remarkable people as it is recorded in the Bible. 
Motherhood was the glory of the matrons of Israel, and 
the childless wife mourned her unhappy fate, and wept, 
and prayed the God of Abraham to take away her re- 
proach. Read the Canticle of Anna at the birth of her 
son Samuel (Samuel, ii.), and you will learn what you 
seem not to know, that to be a mother in Judea was the 
occasion of thanksgiving and rejoicing, and to be childless 
was considered an affliction and a judgment of an angry 
God. When the mother of Samuel came to offer the 
sacrifice of purification she placed him in the hands of 
Heli, the high-priest, and said : " For this child did I 
pray, and the Lord hath granted me my petition, which 
I asked of him. Therefore I also have lent him to the 
Lord. And they adored the Lord there. And Anna 
prayed and said : My heart hath rejoiced in the Lord. 
* * There is none holy as the Lord is, for there is none 
other beside thee, and there is none strong like our God." 

Here is a subject for a painter. These sweet, joyful, 
grateful words come from a happy mother's heart. Does 
she ask pardon for having borne a son ? Is there any- 
thing here to suggest that she had been guilty of a crime ? 
Compare this prayer of an Israelite mother with your un- 
truthful words, and how coarse and vulgar you appear in 
her sacred presence. They taint the atmosphere of 



98 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

sacredness and mystery with which God has surrounded 
motherhood. 

Ingersoll — " According to the Old Testament, woman 
had to ask pardon for the crime of having borne sons 
and daughters." 

Comment — This is an untruth. I leave you to say 
whether it was intentional, or made through ignorance. 

Ingersoll — But "woman had to be purified." 

Comment — Yes, but this purification had no reference 
to crime or guilt. There were many purifications re- 
quired in the Jewish ritual. To be ritually unclean was 
no crime or disgrace. A physician who touched his pa- 
tient, for instance, to count his pulse, became unclean 
by that act. (Lev. xv. 7.) He who performed the char- 
itable act of burying a dead body became unclean, as did 
he also who served in some of the sacred offices. . When, 
therefore, you imagine that " unclean" meant guilt or 
crime, and talk about the crime of bearing sons and 
daughters, you simply show your ignorance of what you 
so flippantly talk about. Pope was right when he said : 
"A little learning is a dangerous thing.*' 

Ingersoll — " The doctrine that woman is the slave. 
or serf, of man — is savagery, pure and simple." 

Comment — No, it is not savagery ; it is a false doc- 
trine, pure and simple. As neither Jew nor Christian 
believes that woman is a slave or a serf, I cannot see the 
purpose of your remark. 

Ingersoll — " In no country in the world had woman 
less liberty than in the Holy Land." 

Comment — It depends on what you mean by "liberty.'' 
It is true, women in Judea had not the liberty to do 
many things that were permitted to the women of pagan 



woman's condition among jews and pagans. 99 

nations, just as a virtuous woman has not the liberty of 
the depraved and fallen. It is this fact that gives the 
laws of Moses a pre-eminence over the laws of pagan na- 
tions. The honor of wives and the modesty of daugh- 
ters were protected in Judea. The women of Egypt, 
Chaldea, Persia, Greece, etc., had the liberty to marry 
their uncles, brothers, fathers, and even mothers were 
free to marry their own sons. How cruel in Moses to 
forbid these liberties to the women of Judea ! Pagan 
women had the liberty to sacrifice their virtue at the 
lewd altars of Venus and Cybele. A description of the 
wickedness and impurity the worship of these heathens 
involved can be read by no virtuous Christian without a 
shudder. Moses forbade these abominations, in honor 
of God and human nature, and for this you accuse him 
of taking away the "rights" of women. It is to the 
honor of Hebrew womanhood that they did not practice 
such "liberties," and to Hebrew legislation that they 
were not permitted. If you had read and studied the 
historians Herodotus and Strabo in reference to the con- 
dition of women in Babylon, Lydia, Thrace, Armenia, 
Medea, India, Egypt and Greece, you would have less to 
say about their "liberties." I refer you to these authors, 
as it would not be proper to quote their descriptions of 
life, manners and worship in those countries, in a re- 
spectable book. The lives of mother and child were pro- 
tected in Judea. In those countries I have mentioned 
they w T ere at the mercy of the husband and master. This 
was also the case in ancient Eome. 

Ingersoll — "The position of woman was far better 
in Egypt than in Palestine." 

Comment — This is one of those bold, reckless state- 
ments which characterize all your lectures and writings. 



100 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

According to Strabo, who travelled in Egypt before the 
Christian era, women were the toilers and tillers of the 
soil. Their condition was somewhat analogous to that 
of the squaws among the Indians of our western territo- 
ries. Egypt is the land of silence and of mystery. Its 
origin, ancient religion, customs and laws are at the best 
matters of conjecture to the hieroglyphic archaeologist. 
The stone-lipped sphinx is its true symbol. Beyond the 
seventeenth dynasty of Manetho, when Joseph was pre- 
mier of the land, there is no reliable or intelligible his- 
tory. Egyptologists, from Clement of Alexandria down 
to Champollion, Young and Wilkinson, have exhausted 
their learning and genius in vain to unravel the mystery 
of the silent valley of the Nile, to make the footprints of 
that mysterious people tell us something of their past — 
whence they came, their laws, social customs and habits. 
The sphinx smiles a rigid, stony smile, the sands of ages 
gather about the base of the pyramids, and man is about 
to give up the mystery in despair, when suddenly and 
unexpectedly the long-lost light breaks forth in all its 
brilliancy — Ingersoll speaks, and all is light. "The po- 
sition of woman was far better in Egypt than in Pales- 
tine," says he. But, dear sir, how or where did you learn 
this? The history of Egypt before the time of the 
Ptolemais is mere conjecture. The writings of Hermes 
Trismegistus are apochryphal. Manetho is fragmentary. 
You have then nothing left but the Old Testament, Her- 
odotus and Strabo, and the two last only echo the dying 
agonies, the death sighs of a once powerful people as they 
sunk before the rising glories of Greece and Rome. 
These writers only record the last act in the drama of 
old Egypt. 

Ingersoll — " Upon ancient tombs husband and wife 
are represented as seated in the same chair." 



MISSTATEMENTS, ETC. 101 

Comment — This is of no consequence whatever ; but I 
quote it for the purpose of asking you how you know 
they were represented as husband and wife ? 

Ingersoll — " In Persia women were priests." 

Comment — Yes, but a woman priest meant a priest 
who, if she had lived in New York at the present day, 
would be sent to Ward's Island. 

Ingersoll — " At the advent of Christianity, in all 
pagan countries, women officiated at the sacred altars." 

Comment — Yes. Strabo relates that there was a tem- 
ple of Venus at Corinth so rich that it maintained above 
a thousand harlots, sacred to her service. That is the 
way they " officiated." It was high time for the advent 
of Christianity. 

Ingersoll — " They guarded the eternal fire." 

Comment — And they will probably continue to do so. 

Ingersoll — " They kept the sacred books." 

Comment — This is not true. 

Ingersoll — "From their lips came the oracles of 
fate." 

Comment — Just as they continue to come from the 
lips of female mediums of questionable reputation, for- 
tune-tellers, gypsies, etc. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MORE ABOUT WOMEN — BIBLE AND REVELATION — MORE 
ABOUT MISREPRESENTATION. 

INGERSOLL — " Under the denomination of the Chris- 
tian church woman became the merest slave for at 
least a thousand years," 

Comme xt — This is too general and indefinite. General 
statements can be met only by a general denial and a call 
for proofs and specifications. Christianity found woman 
in the pagan world at man's feet and it raised her up and 
placed her at his side as a companion, where she belongs, 
and from whence she came. 

I ngersoll — " It was claimed that through woman the 
race had fallen." 

Comment — Claimed by whom ? Christianity does not 
and never did hold that the race fell through woman or 
the disobedience of Eve, for Eve was never the responsi- 
ble agent of humanity, as Adam was. Humanity existed 
before Eve was made. It existed perfect and complete in 
Adam. From him God made the woman. He was there- 
fore prior in time, prior in responsibility, and alone the 
agent of the human family. It was through him, as St. 
Paul informs us, that the race fell. "By one man, sin 
entered into the world, and by sin, death." 

I believe your father was a Presbyterian, and he no 
doubt taught you the Presbyterian catechism in which you 

read the lines : 

"In Adam's fall 
We sinned all." 

L02 



BIBLE AND REVELATION. 103 

There is no mention of woman here. I quote this, not 
to adopt its doctrine, but to show that yon were not taught 
that the race fell through woman. Eve was the occasion, 
not the cause of the fall, just as Mary was the occasion or 
instrument of man's redemption. Adam fell, and human- 
ity fell with and by him ; Christ rose and humanity rose 
again with and by him. This is the Christian doctrine 
on the subject in a nutshell. 

Ingersoll — "And that her loving kiss had poisoned all 
the springs of life." 

Comment — Fudge. 

Ingersoll — "Will Mr. Black have the kindness to 
state a few of his objections to the devil." 

Comment — The principal objection to him is that he 
is a damned liar and the father of liars. 

Ingersoll — " Again I ask, why were the Jewish people 
as wicked, cruel and ignorant with a revelation from God, 
as other nations were without ?" 

Commex t — This question is based on a false hypothesis. 
I deny that the Jews were as wicked, cruel and ignorant as . 
other nations of their time. They were angels in com- 
parison with the deceased, rotten and pestiferous races 
about them. 

Ingersoll — " Why were the worshippers of false deities 
as brave, as kind, and generous as those who knew the 
only true and living God ?" 

Comment — Because they were not. 

Ingersoll — "Will you tell me why God failed to give 
the Bible to the whole world ?" 

Comment — God did not fail to give his revelation to 
the whole world. In the beginning, he revealed himself 
and his will to mankind, who afterwards to a great extent 



104 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

forgot that revelation. Man began on this earth with a 
true knowledge of the true God, but subsequently fell into 
idolatry. The wise sayings and moral precepts of the 
philosophers in the remoter ages were but the echoes of 
that original divine revelation. The nearer we approach 
to the origin of the human race the purer we find both 
doctrine and morals. This has been demonstrated by 
Thebaud in his remarkable work on Gentilism. 

God then gave mankind originally a revelation, but 
man in the course of time failed to keep it in his memory,, 
and fell into ignorance, idolatry and barbarism. He be- 
came a victim, not of evolution, but of devilution. 

Ingersoll — " If Jehovah was in fact God he knew the 
end from the beginning. He knew that his Bible would 
be a breastwork behind which tyranny and hypocrisy 
wonld crouch.'' 

Comment — Granted. AVhat then ? Because he knew 
that his revelation would be abused, misrepresented and 
ridiculed by some, must he therefore refuse it to the 
world ? Every gift of God — food, life, health, ability, 
reason, are abused by some. Must he deny to man, 
groping in error, the light of revelation because he knew 
the hypocrite would deny it and blaspheme ? 

Lngersoll — God knew "that it would be the defense 
of robbers called kings, and hypocrites called priests." 

Comme st — He knew that it would be misquoted in de- 
fense of tyranny, and that it would be misrepresented by 
hypocrites called infidels, but that is no reason why he 
should not give his revelation because of your blasphe- 
mies, for which it is in no way accountable. 

Ingeesoll — " He knew that he taught the Jewish peo- 
ple but little of importance.'' 



MISREPRESENTATION. 105 

Comment — You only imagine that you know this. 
You must not confound your knowledge with that of 
Jehovah. How do you know what he knew ? You evi- 
dently do not need to pray the old Scotch dominie's 
prayer : " 0, Lord, gie us a gude conceit o' oursel." 

Ingersoll — " He knew that he found them free and 
left them captives." 

Comment — He knew that he found them in Egyptian 
slavery and made them a powerful nation. 

Ingersoll — " He knew that he had never fulfilled the 
promises made to them." 

Comment — He knew that the promises made to the 
Jews were expressly and distinctly conditional on their 
obedience to his commands and laws, and that they had 
disregarded those commands and broken those laws. 
They disobeyed him and in consequence fell again into 
bondage — the sceptre passed from the hands of Israel. 

Ingersoll — " I here take occasion to thank Mr. Black 
for having admitted that Jehovah gave no commandment 
against the practice of polygamy, that he established 
slavery, waged wars of extermination, and persecuted for 
opinion's sake even unto death." 

Comment — First. You must have been in a very 
gushing humor when you so formally thanked your oppo- 
nent for admitting what no Christian ever dreamt of 
denying. Your opponent said that " if you were a states- 
man instead of a mere politician you would see good and 
sufficient reasons for the forbearance to legislate directly 
on this subject (polygamy)," and that " it would be im- 
proper for him to set them forth" in an article intended 
for the general reader. Not being a statesman, a moralist 
or a physician, you of course do not see those things to 
which your opponent delicately directs your attention. 



10G NOTES ON IXGKKSOLL. 

Second. When you say Mr. Black admitted that 
Jehovah established slavery, you say what is not true. It 
is the height of unwisdom to make a statement that is so 
easily refuted. Your thanks were premature as Mr. Black 
never, at least in the article you reply to, admitted any- 
thing of the kind. He said : "Johovah permitted his 
chosen people to hold the captives they took in war or 
purchased from the heathen as servants for life." That 
is, he permitted the Jews to follow the customs of the 
times in this matter. Is this an admission that Jehovah 
established slavery? Like a lawyer more "cute" or 
cunning than able, you change the word permitted to 
established. You do not need to be told that there is a 
difference between to permit, and to establish. It is 
very unbecoming in the great apostle of "candor" and 
"honor bright" to thus misrepresent his antagonist, and 
it must bring the blush of shame even to your cheek to 
be caught in such petty chicanery. 

Third. To exterminate, from ex and term in us, means to 
drive from the border, to expel, to drive out. This the 
Jews did to the Canaanites, just as we are exterminating 
the Indians from this continent. It is the logic of 
migration, the law of human movement. The race in its 
movements on the surface of the earth is governed by 
laws of social dynamics of which individuals and nations 
are unconscious. Some gushing, molasses candy philoso- 
pher of the future will condemn us of the nineteenth 
century as bitterly for exterminating the Indian, as you 
condemn the Israelite for dispossessing the Canaanite. 
And he will have as much influence on his age as you 
have on yours — and no more. 

Fourth. When you say your opponent admitted that 
Jehovah persecuted "for opinion's sake own unto death," 



MISREPRESENTATIONS. 107 

you again misrepresent him. God, as God, holds his 
intelligent creatures responsible for every thought, but 
God as the temporal monarch of Judea inflicted punish- 
ment only for overt acts. There is no punishment men- 
tioned in the Jewish criminal law for sins of thought, or 
mere opinions. Therefore it is not true to say that God 
punished or persecuted for opinion's sake. Crimes cog- 
nizable to the Jewish criminal code were acts capable of 
proof — subjects of evidence. Thoughts and opinions, 
unless made overt, are not capable of being evidenced or 
proved. Therefore no one was punished in Judea for 
opinion's sake. 

Ingersoll — "Most theologians endeavor to putty, 
patch and paint the wretched record of inspired crime, 
but Mr. Black has been bold enough and honest enough 
to admit the truth." 

Comment — Here you transfer your misrepresentations 
from Mr. Black to the theologians ; and Mr. Black will 
doubtless appreciate your compliment at its true value 
when he reflects that the admissions, for which you are 
so anxious to credit him at the expense of the theologians, 
were never made by him. True, your opponent has been 
bold enough and honest enough to admit the truth, but 
he has not been so stupid or so asinine as to admit what 
you attribute to him, while you have not been true 
enough or honest enough to correctly state what he does 
in fact admit. Mr. Black is evidently not a theologian. 
He has made some admissions, not of fact, but of princi- 
ple, which he should not have made, and taken certain 
positions which he cannot hold successfully ; and singular 
as it may seem to him and you, those positions are the 
very ones that are not Christian. One instance will 
suffice. Mr. Black says that the creation was a miracle. 
Theologians do not agree with him in this. 



108 NOTES ON IXGERSOLL. 

Now as to theologians, at whom you take your fling, 
over Mr. Black's shoulders, I will say this of them : If 
they were guilty of as much puttying and patching, mis- 
representation, low trickery, cunning, deceit, flattering of 
popular passions and errors as you have perpetrated in 
this one article of yours, I would be disposed to look 
upon Christianity as the sublimest fraud that ever misled 
the human race. 

You deem it no offence against decency to accuse theo- 
logians of intention to perpetrate and perpetuate fraud, 
to call them hypocrites, etc., and yet if they turn on you 
and call you a speculator who turns falsehood into 
dollars, a fraud, and a liar, you begin to whimper about 
the Master who tells them to turn the other cheek. You 
are a brave man. You challenge to mortal combat, and 
on the field you seriously tell your antagonist that he 
cannot and must not according to his principle blow your 
brains out ; while you- claim the right to shoot him 
through the heart, if you can. There is no epithet in 
your vocabulary low or venomous enough to fling at 
priests and theologians, but when a "policeman" like Mr. 
Black ventures to catalogue you, you are up in indigna- 
tion, and appeal to decency and the etiquette of debate. 



CHAPTER XV. 

OLD AXD NEW TESTAMENTS — SLAVERY AND CHRISTIAN- 
ITY — THE APOSTLES NEITHER LUNATICS NOR IM- 
POSTORS. 

INGERSOLL — " In this age of fact and demonstration 
it is refreshing to find a man who believes so thor- 
oughly in the monstrous and miraculous, the impossible 
and immoral." 

Comment — Here you assume to determine what is 
monstrous, miraculous, impossible and immoral. It is 
refreshing in this age of general education to see an in- 
fidel offering his crude notions as ultimate principles or 
axioms. To say your opponent believes in the monstrous, 
impossible and immoral, is to decide the question in your 
own favor — to play the counsel for the prosecution and 
the judge at the same time — a thing not permissible. 

The words "fact" and "demonstration" are to you 
what the red flag is to the Spanish matadore ; you flout 
them in the face of the people as the matadore flouts the 
red flag in the face of a wild bull, and you imagine they 
will throw down their heads, shut their eyes and rush at 
them — and be taken in. You are mistaken. You may 
deceive some — but the people on the average are not 
fools. 

Ingersoll — " Mr. Black comes to the conclusion that 
the Hebrew Bible is in exact harmony with the New Tes- 
tament." 

109 



110 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

Comment — Mr. Black came to no such conclusion. It 
is no doubt true that the Old and New Testaments " are 
so connected together that if one is true the other can- 
not be false." This is your opponent's statement, and it 
is very different from what you represent him as saying. 

Ingersoll — " It hardly seems possible to me that there 
is a right-minded, sane man, except Mr. Black, who be- 
lieves that a God of infinite kindness and justice ever 
commanded one nation to exterminate another.'' 

Comment — It no doubt appears strange and hardly 
possible to you, after your prodigal use of deceit and 
sophistry, that any one should believe anything at all. 
When God commands one nation to exterminate another 
the Christian believes that there is very serious reason for 
it. He believes that God knows more than he ; and does 
not think that to be a philosopher it is necessary to exhaust 
the resources of his lachrymal glands on every guilty 
wretch and law-breaker whom the God of justice deems 
it proper to lash or exterminate. God makes instruments 
of nations to punish nations. 

Ingersoll — "In his (Black's) efforts to show that the 
infallible God established slavery in Judea, he takes occa- 
sion to say that i the doctrine that slavery is a crime under 
all circumstances was first started by the adherents of a 
political faction in this counary less than forty years 
ago.' " 

Comment — First, Mr. Black never made any efforts to 
prove that God established slavery in Judea ; notwith- 
standing your inverted commas. 

Second, In your blundering haste to reply you fail t<> 
catch your opponent's meaning. Black says : " The doc- 
trine that slavery is a crime under nil circumstances was 
first started, etc., less than forty years ago." When 



SLAVEEY AND CHRISTIANITY. Ill 

Black made this statement he took it for granted that 
yon knew the difference between that which is wrong in 
itself, and that which is wrong by circumstances — malum 
in se and malum per accidens. Your opponent is too good 
a historian to say that the anti-slavery movement began 
only forty years ago. 

Since the advent of Christianity, slavery has been con- 
sidered a social and circumstantial evil, but it was never 
considered by men of healthy brains an evil per se, an evil 
in its nature or essence. This is what Mr. Black meant 
by " all circumstances," but you were in such a hurry you 
did not see it. This distinction takes the pith out of all 
your eloquence on this point. The anti-slavery move- 
ment is as old as Christianity. The councils of the 
Christian Church have, age after age, labored to abolish 
it, or to mitigate its severities. It did not begin forty 
years ago. Mr. Black does not say it did. He says that 
the doctrine that slavery was wrong under all circum- 
stances, was first started forty years ago. In this he is 
for all practical purposes correct. With this distinction 
in view, your argument on this point loses its wind. The 
Christian Church, during eighteen centuries, has fought 
against slavery, and taught that all men are equal before 
God. It was this teaching that in part brought about 
the persecutions of Christians in the Boman Empire. 
The law-makers of Borne at that time were slave-holders. 
They did not relish the doctrine preached by the Apostles, 
that all men are equal, and they enacted laws of coercion 
and repression. But the genius of Christian liberty 
smiled at their imbecile efforts, knowing that she would 
live to look back through centuries at the forgotten urns 
of these law-makers, and consider their acts as matters 
of ancient history . 



112 XOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

When I say Christianity antagonized slavery I do not 
mean that it was by a general, indefinite sentiment, but 
by actual legislation. I will in proof of this give some 
of the councils which legislated to protect the slave. 
The council of Eliberitan, held in the year 305 ; the 
council of Epaon, year 517 ; the council of Toledo, year 
094 : the fifth council of Aries, year 549 ; Emeritan, 666; 
the eleventh of Toledo, year 675 ; Worms, 868 ; second 
of Matisconen, 585 ; the fifth of Paris, 614 ; the third of 
Toledo, 589 ; fourth of Toledo, 633 ; of Agatha, 506 ; 
Iiheims, 625 ; the third of Lyons, 583 ; the council of 
St. Patrick, celebrated in Ireland in 450, required church 
property to be used in redeeming captives ; the second 
council of Vernense, 844, did the same. The second 
council of Lyons excommunicated those who enslaved 
others. A council held in 922 declared that he who sold 
another into slavery was guilty of homicide. A council 
held in London in the year 1102 forbid the selling of 
men in that city, and called it an infamous traffic. Pope 
Gregory XVI. in 1839 published Apostolic letters against 
the slave trade. I might mention many other councils, 
but I have given enough to show the spirit and tendency 
of Christianity on the subject of slavery, and that anti- 
slavery is a Christian thought. 

Ixgersoll — " It will not do to take the ground that 
the rapid rise and spread of a religion demonstrates its 
divine character." 

Commext — Certainly not, and that is the reason why 
Mr. Black did not take that ground, although you labor 
to make your readers believe he did. Theologians do not 
teach that rapidity of rise and spread, taken alone, is evi- 
dence of the divine character of Christianity. Hence 
your several pages devoted to show the unsoundness of 



KISE AND SPEEAD OF CHRISTIANITY. 113 

that position are just so much waste of paper. It is a 
loss of time, as well, to overthrow a position that no one 
holds — that has no existence except in your vivid imag- 
ination. 

That it may he seen that your adversary does not hold 
the position you ascribe to him, I will here quote his ar- 
gument in its completeness : 

"When Jesus of Nazareth announced himself to he 
Christ, the Son of G-od, in Judea, many thousands of 
persons who heard his words and saw his works believed 
in his divinity without hesitation. Since the morning of 
creation, nothing has occurred so wonderful as the rapid- 
ity with which this religion has spread itself abroad. 
Men who were in the noon of life when Jesus was put to 
death as a malefactor lived to see him worshipped as G-od 
by organized bodies of believers in every province of the 
Roman empire. In a few more years it took complete 
possession of the general mind, supplanted all other re- 
ligions, and wrought a radical change in human society." 

This is a succinct statement of the facts in the case. 
Mr. Black next proceeds to give the remarkable circum- 
stances under which this rapid change took place ; and 
these circumstances are an integral part of the argument, 
for it is by them that the rapid rise of Christianity is dis- 
tinguishable from that of other religions. It is the rise 
of Christianity in the face of these circumstances that 
constitutes the evidence of its divine origin. Mr. Black 
continues : 

" It did this in the face of obstacles which, according 
to every human calculation, were insurmountable. It 
was antagonized by all the evil propensities, the sensual 
wickedness, and the vulgar crimes of the multitude, as 
well as the polished vices of the luxurious classes ; and 



114 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

was most violently opposed even by those sentiments and 
habits of thought which were esteemed virtuous, such as 
patriotism and military heroism. It encountered not only 
the ignorance and superstition, but the learning and 
philosophy of the time. Barbarism and civilization were 
alike its deadly enemies. The priesthood of every estab- 
lished religion and the authority of every government 
were arrayed against it. All these combined together 
and roused to furious hostility, were overcome, not by 
the enticing words of man's wisdom, but by the simple 
presentation of a pure and peaceful doctrine, preached 
by obscure strangers, at the daily peril of their lives. Is 
it Mr. Ingersoll's idea that this happened through chance ? 
If not, there are but two other ways to account for it, 
either the evidence by which the Apostles were able to 
prove that the supernatural origin of the gospels was 
overwhelming and irresistible, or else its propagation was 
provided for and carried on by the direct aid of the Di- 
vine Being himself. Between these two, infidelity may 
take its choice." 

T.his, Mr. Ingersoll, is your adversary's argument in 
full, and the reader will see why you try to twist it out 
of shape and misrepresent it before you attempted to an- 
swer it, and why you notice one part and ignore the 
other. 

Your reply is, that other religions arose and spread 
with equal rapidity. Granted, for argument's sake. But 
did they arise under like circumstances, and did they 
meet and overcome like obstacles ? Christianity met and 
overcame obstacles "which, according to every human 
calculation, were insurmountable," says Mr. Black. You 
do not deny this, and you cannot assert it of other re- 
. ligions. 



EISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY. 115 

Ingersoll — "Imagine a Mohammedan answering an 
infidel ; would he not use the argument of Mr. Black, 
simply substituting Mohammed for Christ, just as effect- 
ually as it has been used againt me?" 

Comment — No, because a Mohammedan could not use 
it with truth or force. It would be equally groundless 
in the mouth of a Brahmin or a priest of Isis and Osiris, 
for the rise and spread of these false religions have noth- 
in common with the rise and progress of Christianity, 
except perhaps rapidity, and this is not given by Mr. 
Black as a proof of the divine origin of Christianity. 
You evidently set about answering his argument before 
you got a good hold of its full force and meaning. 

Ingersoll — "Do you not see that your argument 
proves too much, and that it is equally applicable to all 
the religions of the world ?" 

Comment — No ; the flickering and uncertain glare of 
your light does not enable me to see it. A better light, 
that of reason, together with a little knowledge of the 
facts in the case, will convince your readers that it is ap- 
plicable to Christianity alone of all religions that ever 
claimed the attention of man. Your efforts to make the 
argument fit Buddhism, Brahminism and Mohammedan- 
ism can succeed only by misrepresenting it, which, by the 
way, you have not hesitated to do. 

Ingersoll — " The old argument that if Christianity is 
a human fabrication, its authors must have been either 
good men or bad men, takes it for granted that there are 
but two classes of persons — the good and the bad. There 
is at least one other class — the mistaken." 

Comment — Then you must belong to this newly-in- 
vented class. The mistaken must be either good or bad. 
If they are honestly mistaken they are good so far as the 



116 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

subject of the mistake goes ; if they are dishonetly mis- 
taken they are bad. Don't you see we must come back 
to the two classes which "the old argument takes for 
granted" ? 

Ingersoll — " The history of the world is filled with 
instances where men have honestly supposed that they 
had received communications from angels and gods." 

Comment— How do you know that they honestly sup- 
posed ; Must you not, from the nature of the case, take 
their words for the honesty of their supposition ? Then 
it is their claim to have received communications that 
constitute the instances with which you say history is 
filled. Now, a claim is something tangible, something 
that can be tested. When a man claims to have received 
a communication from God, Christians and all other sen- 
sible people require some evidence in proof of the truth 
of his claim, and it is this test that enables us to distin- 
guish between real and imaginary, true and pretended 
communications. History is full of instances where men 
have claimed to have received divine communications ; it 
is also full of instances where these claims were rejected 
for want of sufficient evidence of their truth. 

Ingersoll — " What we must say is that, being good 
men, they were mistaken." 

Comment — Then you know more about events that 
transpired nearly two thousand years ago than those who 
were eye-witnesses to them ! Whatever else a modern 
infidel may lack, he is never found wanting in assurance. 
It is his strong point. 

The Apostles claimed a divine communication and mis- 
sion. They worked miracles in proof of their claim. 
These miracles proved both to the Apostles themselves and 
to those who witnessed them that there could be no mis- 



THE APOSTLES NOT IMPOSTERS 117 

take about their claim. "What we must say is, that you 
are mistaken," when you assume to be a better judge, a 
more reliable witness, of events that transpired nineteen 
hundred years ago in Judea than those were who then 
lived, and saw those events with their own eyes, or heard 
them with their own ears. Would your statements, under 
the circumstances, be taken against theirs in any court 
of justice ? 

It is true that there have been insane people and fanat- 
ical enthusiasts who imagined that they had a mission 
from God, but this does not prove that sane men have 
not had real commissions and missions from God. A 
false prophet does not destroy the possibility of recog- 
nizing a true one, as a counterfeit note does not destroy 
the value of a genuine note. There are many presidents 
of the United States and Queen Victorias in our insane 
asylums. Do their hallucinations vitiate the real presi- 
dent's title or prove that there is no such person as 
Queen Victoria ? or does the delusion of Guiteau destroy 
the claims of Moses or a St. Paul to a divine commission ? 
Yet this is the assumption and drift of your argument 
against the mission of the Apostles ! Your reasoning 
stated in form is this : 

Some men have been mistaken. 

Therefore the founders of Christianity were mistaken. 

A boy who could reason no better than this ought to 
have his ears boxed — if boxes large enough could be 
found. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

WHO WROTE THE GOSPELS? — CHARACTER OF THE 
EVANGELISTS— MIRACLES OF CHRIST — LAZARUS, COME 
FORTH ! 

INGERSOLL — "We are told that 'there is no good 
reason to doubt that the statements of the Evangel- 
ists, as we have them now, are genuine.' The fact is, no 
one knows who made the 'statements of the Evangelists.' " 

Comment — The fact is there can be no reasonable 
doubt whatever that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John 
wrote the Gospels attributed to them. Your statement 
to the contraiy has not a particle of evidence to rest on. 
You have as good reason, and no better to say that no 
one knows who wrote Shakespeare, Paradise Lost of Mil- 
ton, the Divine Comedy of Dante, Cassai, Livy, Tacitus, 
Josephus or Homer. No one ever doubts that those 
books were written by the authors to whom they are 
attributed. The same kind of evidence that establishes 
the authenticity of these prove the authenticity of the 
Gospels in a higher degree. Historical evidence, common 
tradition and a concatenation of circumstances are all we 
have to prove the genuineness of Hamlet and Othello, 
Paradise Lost, Livy, Tacitus and Josephus. And they 
are abundantly sufficient. Now this historical evidence, 
common tradition and concatenation of circumstances are 
equally strong for the authors of the four Gospels. They 
are stronger, for the facts treated of in the Gospel;: have 

118 



WHO WROTE THE GOSPELS? 119 

changed the course of human history, and in consequence 
the attention of mankind has been more particularly 
directed to them. The more important the contents of a 
book are to mankind the more surely will its genuineness 
be admitted or denied from the beginning. It is a 
remarkable fact that the authenticity or genuineness of 
the four Gospels was never brought in question until 
modern times, and then only by a few infidels, and even 
these confine themselves to bold, naked, groundless state- 
ments. These G-ospels were received in the earliest times 
as genuine and were quoted by the earliest Christian 
writers as the works of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 
All the enemies of Christianity, Jew, pagan or heretic, 
who wrote against the Christian religion, admitted without 
a shadow of hesitation or doubt the genuineness of these 
Gospels. 

Celsus, who lived in the second century, and was as 
rabid an enemy of the Christian religion as you are, "not 
only mentions by name but also quotes passages from the 
b ooks of the New Testament, so that it is certain we have 
the identical books to which he referred." In all his 
"writings extant he never suggests the slightest doubt of 
the genuineness of the books he quotes from and whose 
doctrines he opposes. Porphyry, (A. D, 233), another 
anti-Christian writer in his objections takes for granted 
the genuineness of the Gospels. Julian the Apostate (A. 
D. 363) another enemy of the Church, calls the Gospels 
by the name they now bear and nowhere questions their 
genuineness or authenticity. Neither Celsus in the second 
century, Porphyry in the third, nor Julian in the fourth, 
doubted the authenticity of these books, or ever insinua- 
ted that Christians were mistaken in the authors to whom 
they ascribed them. No one of them expressed an opin- 



120 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

ion on this subject that was different from that held by 
the Christians. There is much more evidence that could 
be adduced for the authenticity of the Gospels and the 
other books of the New Testament, but it is needless. 
Those who wish to read them in full can consult Home's 
Introduction to the Holy Scriptures, Vol. I., Chapter III. 
and IV., and Du-Clot's Sainte Bible Vengee, Vol III. 
Those who will examine these books will see what value 
is to be placed on your statement that "no one knows 
who made the statements of the Evangelists." 

Ingersoll — " There are three important manuscripts 
upon which the Christian world relies * * the Codex 
Vatican * * the Codex Alexandrine * * and the 
Sinaitic Codex." 

Comment — These Codices are simply the oldest known 
manuscripts of the Sacred Scriptures. They are not 
original manuscripts; only the completest copies extant. 
and they are all more or less imperfect. These manus- 
cripts are venerable aud useful, but it is not true to say 
the Christian world relies or depends on them. If they 
were all swept out of existence to-morrow, it would not 
have any effect whatever on Christianity, which existed 
before them, and will survive them. 

Black — " Nothing was said by the most virulent ene- 
mies against the personal honesty of the Evangelists." 

Ingersoll — "How is this known?" 

Comment — It is known from the fact that neither in 
tradition nor history is there anything directly or indi- 
rectly throwing the least suspicion or shadow of doubt 
on their honesty, integrity and holiness of life. The 
Apostles certainly have a right to the same protection 
that you claim for your own character. You will not 
deny them this. Now, suppose a friend of yours said : 



CHARACTER OF THE EVANGELISTS. 121 

" Nothing is said by the most virulent enemies against 
the personal honesty and virtue of Mr. Ingersoll." What 
would you think of the man who would reply by saying : 
i ' How is this known ?" You would say he was a coward 
and a contemptible sneak, with the heart of an assassin, 
without his courage. Is not your honesty and virtue to 
be taken for granted until there is evidence to the con- 
trary ? Is not that man a criminal who attempts to rob 
you of your character by hints or winks or insinuating 
questions? Christianity teaches that he is, whatever 
you may think, with your code of morals. The world 
after nearly twenty centuries, has found nothing but 
holiness in the character of the Apostles, and they have 
lived during all that time in the calcium light of history. 
The infidels and Christ-haters of all times have found 
nothing against them, and yet, after this long trial, when 
their personal honesty is asserted, you, the apostle of fair 
play and " honor bright," ask, " How is this known ?" 
How small men can become when led by one overmaster- 
ing passion or delusion. 

Ixgeesoll — " If Christ performed the miracles record- 
ed in the New Testament, why would the Jews put to 
death a man able to raise the dead ?" 

Comment — The miracles of Christ recorded in the 
New Testament were admitted by the Jews. It never oc- 
curred to Jew or Gentile or Pagan to doubt the fact of 
those miracles. Celsus, Porphyry and Julian admitted 
them and tried to deprive them of their significance and 
force by saying that Christ was a magician who had 
learned the black art in Egypt while he dwelt with Mary 
his mother on the banks of the Nile. The Jews also ac- 
counted for his power, which they admitted, by saying he 
had stolen the unspeakable word from the temple ; and 



122 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

some of them said he worked miracles by the power of 
the devil. These explanations of his miracles are the 
strongest evidence of their reality. Porphyry (A. D. 270) 
said, "Jesus, having been raised obscurely, went to 
Egypt, where, having learned to perform some miracles, 
he returned to Judea, and proclaimed himself to be God." 

Julian the Emperor and Apostate (361) said: "He 
(Christ) did not do anything worth speaking of, unless 
we consider it a great thing to have cured the deaf and 
blind and to have expelled the demons from those who 
were possessed in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany." 
The miracles of Christ were so striking and so public 
that the anti-christian philosophers were driven to the 
necessity of admitting them and trying to explain them 
away. Thus, Hierocles, a pagan philosopher, and gover- 
nor of Alexandria under the emperor Dioclesian, was not 
satisfied with persecuting the Christians, but he must, to 
prove his loyalty, no doubt, write a book in which he 
compared the pretended miracles of ApolloniusThyanasus 
to those of Christ. There were no lecture bureaus at 
the time, and no North American Review, so Hierocles 
had to write a book. He wrote his book in which he 
said as follows, and in which the reader will recognize a 
certain Ingersollian twang ; 

"The Christians make a great noise and give great 
praise to Jesus because he gave sight to the blind, and 
did other wonders. * * We have better reason in at- 
tributing like works to many great men, such as Aristens, 
Pythagoras, Apollonius." 

After having described the wonders worked by Apol- 
lonius, this pagan philosopher continues : 

" I speak of these wonders to show that we think more 
wisely than the Christians; we do not regard as a god, 



MIRACLES OF CHRIST. 123 

.but as a friend of the gods, a man who has worked such 
great wonders ; the Christians, on the contrary, publish 
that Jesus is G-od on account of the trifling prodigies he 
performed. Peter, Paul, and some others of that sect, 
liars, ignorants and magicians, have boasted of the ac- 
tions of Jesus, but Maximus Degeus, the philosopher 
Darius, Philostratus, wise men and lovers of truth, have 
told us of the miracles of Apollonius." 

According to Arnobius the pagans held that Jesus had 
stolen from the sanctuary of the Egyptians the names of 
the powerful genii, and the secrets by which he per- 
formed his wonders. 

Now, Mr. Ingersoll, do not all these attempts of ancient 
philosophers to belittle and explain the works of Jesus 
Christ prove that those works were real — that they were 
known and admitted ? These men knew the facts better 
than you do, and insterd of denying them as you do, they 
tried to make little of them, or to explain them away. 

Ingersoll — " If Christ performed the miracles record- 
ed in the New Testament, why would the Jews put to 
death a man able to raise their dead ?" 

Comment — The argument of this question is, that be- 
cause the Jews put Christ to death they did not believe 
in his miracles as recorded in the Gospels. But this con- 
clusion is false. The Jews believed that God had forbid- 
den them to abandon the law of Moses, even if a prophet 
performing miracles required them to do so. From the 
time of Christ down to the present, the Jews have always 
and uniformly believed in the reality of the miracles of 
Christ. If you do not believe this consult their Tal- 
muds. 

Well, then, you will ask, if they admitted the fact of 
his miracles, why did they not accept him as the Messiah ? 



124 XOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

While they admitted the miracles they did not believe 
that they proved him to be the Messiah. Their prophets 
had performed miracles under the Mosaic law. They 
even raised the dead. The Jews in the time of Christ 
could not understand how miracles could be worked to 
abrogate that law. Fixed habits and prejudices, then, 
caused them to reject the evidence of his miracles while 
they admitted the fact of them. They attributed them 
to Beelzebub. Again, they belived that the promised 
Son of David was to be a great temporal prince, that he 
was to free the Jewish people and establish a great Jewish 
empire, restore the Jewish nobility, and raise the Aaronic 
priesthood to its ancient pre-eminence and glory. His 
preaching and humble life gave no encouragement to 
these hopes, and they refused to believe in him as the 
promised Messiah, even while they admitted his miracles. 
And they put him to death, as they had put to death 
their acknowledged prophets. 

Ingersoll — "Why should they attempt to kill the 
master of death ?" 

Comment — To prove that he Avas not master of death. 

Ixgersoll — " How did it happen that a man who had 
done so many miracles was so obscure, so unknown, that 
one of his disciples had to be bribed to point him out ?" 

Comment — If he was so obscure and unknown why 
was Judas bribed to point him out at all ? That was not 
an age of weekly pictorials by which the faces of public 
men are made familiar to the people. If you were to be 
arrested to-morrow for murder, the law requires that 
some one formally identify you. 

Ingersoll — "Is it not strange that the ones he had 
cured were not his disciples ?" 



LAZARUS, COME FORTH. 125 

Comment — It would be strange if true ; but how do 
you happen to know they were not? Is it not strange 
that you should know more about those who were cured 
than history knows ? Where did you get your informa- 
tion? How do you know that the son of .the widow of 
Nairn was not a disciple of Christ ? or Lazarus, or the 
deaf, the blind and the lame ? You simply know nothing 
whatever about it. And yet with your infidel brass you 
say they were not ! 

Ingersoll — "Can we believe on the testimony of 
those about whose character we know nothing, that Laz- 
arus was raised from the dead ?" 

Comment — Yes, we can and must, just as we believe 
the facts of all history. We believe that Caesar was as- 
sassinated by Brutus ; that Philip was king of Macedon ; 
that Alexander his son was a great conqueror ; that 
Homer lived and wrote a book on the Trojan wars ; that 
Virgil wrote the adventures of iEneas ; that Demosthenes 
thundered against Philip, and that Cicero tore the veil of 
hypocrisy from the brow of Cataline and aroused the 
Eomans to the dangers of his conspiracy ; that the Ko- 
man empire existed and fell, and that Christian nations 
rose out of its ruins. All these and a thousand other 
facts we do and must believe, and yet what do we know 
about the character of the witnesses who testify to them ? 
The principle that destroys the credibility of the G-ospel 
histories destroys at the same time the credibility of all 
history and the credibility of the human race. 

Istgersoll — " What became of Lazarus ?" 

Comment — It is probable that he lived an honest life, 
and did not spend his time in asking foolish questions. 

Lstgersoll — " We never hear of him again." 



126 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

Comment — The world has not ceased to hear of him 
to good purpose for the last nineteen hundred years. 

Ingersoll — " It seems to me he would have been an 
object of great interest." 

Comment — So it has proved, although lie was not the 
first man who was raised from the dead, as we learn from 
the Old Testament. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

MIRACLES OF CHRIST — JOSEPHUS. 

INGEESOLL — "How is it known that it was claimed, 
during the life of Christ, that he had wrought a 
miracle ?" 

Comment — It is known from four histories written by 
four well known historians who were contemporaries of 
the Jewish historian Josephus. Their names are Matthew, 
Mark, Luke and John. These historians, whom the 
world has always believed, tell us that the Jews accused 
Christ of working miracles by the power of Beelzebub, 
and that Christ reasoned with them to prove that his 
miracles were not worked by such power. This is the 
way it is known that it was claimed and admitted, during 
the life of Christ, that he wrought miracles. These his- 
torians give many other instances that I might adduce 
but it is not necessary. 

Ingersoll — "And if the claim was made, how is it 
known that it was not denied ?" 

Comment — There is contemporary evidence that the 
claim was made and admitted and there is no evidence 
whatever that it was ever denied. On the contrary all 
history takes those miracles as facts, that have been passed 
upon as no longer legitimate subjects of dispute. 

As you have adduced no ancient historian who denies 
the miracles of Christ, it must be taken for granted that 
there is none. If there was a single line, of Jew, or Pagan 

127 



128 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

denying these miracles, you infidels would hammer on it 
as persistently as the gentlemanly waiter hammers on the 
Chinese gong at the Railroad depot — twenty minutes for 
refreshments. Failing to find any evidence of this kind 
what do you do ? It is almost incredible but nevertheless 
true ; you actually call on Christians to prove that no 
such evidence ever existed ! You say. "How is it known 
that it was not denied?" The Devil himself, in the 
highest flight of his genius never surpassed this piece of 
supreme impertinence. You are a lawyer, and as such you 
are supposed to know something about legal logic at least. 
Now what would you say of the counsel for the prosecu- 
tion in the star route cases if after failing to find any 
evidence of the guilt of the accused they should require 
you to prove that no such evidence ever existed ? Sup- 
pose Merrick, your able opponent in the star route suit, 
should, after failing to produce evidence of guilt say : 
" How is it known that such evidence does not exist ?" 
What would you feel like saying of him ? What would 
the court think of him? This is the predicament you 
place yourself in when you ask : How is it known that 
the miracles of Christ were never denied ? 

Ingersoll — "Did the Jews believe that Christ was 
clothed with miraculous power ?" 

Comment — They did, And they believed that their 
prophets were also clothed with miraculous power — even 
that of raising the dead, and this was the reason why the 
miracles of Christ did not convince them that he was 
God or the Messiah. 

Ingersoll — " Is it not wonderful that Josephus, the 
best historian the Hebrews produced, says nothing about 
the life or death of Christ ?" 

Comment — Nothing? Here is what he says : — 



MIRACLES OF CHRIST. 129 

" Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if 
it be lawful to call him a man : for he performed many 
wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as re- 
ceived the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him 
many of the Jews, and also many G- entiles. This man 
was the Christ. And when Pilate at the instigation of 
the principal men among us, had condemned him to the 
cross, those who had loved him from the first did not 
cease to adhere to him. For he appeared to them alive 
again on the third day; the divine prophets having foretold 
these and ten thousand other wonderful things concern- 
ing him. And the tribe of the Christians, so named from 
him, subsists to this time." — Antiquities of the Jews, 
Book 18, chap. 3. 

This is something about the life and death of Christ, 
is it not ? 

Lstgersoll — •< The paragraph in Josephus is admitted 
to be an interpolation." 

Commext — Admitted by whom ? By you, and Paine, 
and Voltaire, and other infidels, Tooley street tailors. 
The paragraph is so strong and direct that the infidel 
fraternity cannot get over it s force except by denying its 
genuineness. And this they do accordingly. After this 
denial, which in itself is of no weight whatever, you pro- 
ceed to the next step in infidel tactics and say, " it is ad- 
mitted." Now, sir, it is not admitted that this paragraph 
is an interpolation. On the contrary, it is held to be 
genuine, and for the best of reasons. It is found in all 
the copies of Josephus's works now extant, whether 
printed or manuscript ; in a Hebrew translation preserved 
in the Vatican Library, and in an Arabic version pre- 
served by the Maronites of Mount Lebanus. It is cited 
by Eusebius, the most ancient of Church historians, by 
Q 



130 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

St. Jerome, Rufinus, Isidore of Pelusinm, Sozomen, Cas- 
siodorus, Mcephorus, and many others. Ensebins was 
the first to quote this passage, and it is morally impossi- 
ble that he could have forged it without being detected. 
There was no objection made to this passage in the early 
ages by any of the opponents of the Christian faith. The 
paragraph is then genuine, according to all rules of evi- 
dence and all the canons of sound criticism. 

Ixgeksoll — "Is it not wonderful that no historian 
ever mentioned any of these prodigies ?" 

Comment — The prodigies you refer to are, 1st, the mas- 
sacre of the infants by Herod, 2nd, the Star of Bethle- 
hem, 3rd, the darkness at the time of the crucifixion, etc. 

The first is referred to by Macrobius, a heathen histo- 
rian, in such a manner as to leave no doubt as to the uni- 
versal belief in the fact. 

The second is mentioned by Chalcidus, a Platonic phil- 
osopher, who attests the fact in almost the same words as 
the gospel : 

This Platonist says : " There is another history most 
worthy of our religious veneration, which notes the ap- 
parition of a star destined to announce to men, not dis- 
ease or some terrible mortality, but the advent of a God 
who came down for the salvation and happiness of the 
human race." Julian the Emperor and Apostate admit- 
ted the truth of the account of this star which led the 
wise men, by saying that it was the star Asaph, observed 
by the Egyptians as making its appearance every four 
hundred years. 

The third (the darkness) is mentioned by Phlegon of 
Trallium, a pagan who lived in the middle of the second 
century, i. e., about the year of our Lord 150. He Bays : 
" The fourth year of the two hundred and second 01 vm- 



JOSEPHUS. 131 

piad, there was an eclipse of the sun, the grandest that 
had ever been hitherto. About the sixth hour of the day 
a night so obscured that the stars in the heavens became 
visible. A great earthquake took place, which overturned 
many houses in the city of Nice in Bythania." This 202d 
Olympiad, year 4, corresponds with the 33d year of the 
Christian era. That is the year and time of the crucifixion. 
But let us go back a little. You say, " Josephus is the 
best historian the Hebrews produced." Now, I ask you, 
on what principle do you accept the works of Josephus 
as genuine while you reject the works of Matthew, Mark, 
Luke and John? They were contemporaries. If the 
evidence for the authenticity or genuineness of the histo- 
ries attributed to the Evangelists is not sufficient to give 
them the stamp of veracity, what more evidence have you 
for the genuineness and veracity of Josephus ? Why do 
you reject the works of the Evangelists and admit the 
works of Josephus ? It is useless to ask the question and 
expect an answer. The real answer is this : You imagine 
Josephus does not antagonize your infidel theories, and 
the Evangelic historians do. This accounts for your en- 
mity for the one and your admiration for the other. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

MR. INGERSOLL AS A HERMENEUTIST — JOSEPHUS AGAIN 
— THE ASCENSION — LAST WORDS OF CHRIST — GENE- 
ALOGY. 

INGERSOLL — " Is it not more amazing than all the 
rest, that Christ himself concealed from Matthew, 
Mark and Luke the dogma of Atonement, the necessity 
of belief, and the mystery of the second birth ?" 

Comment — First, Atonement is the expiation of sin 
by the obedience and personal sufferings of Christ — re- 
demption. Now, Matthew says : "Even as the Son of 
Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and 
to give his life a redemption for many." — xx. %8. Mark 
makes the same statement word for word. — x. 45. Luke 
says : " But those things which God had foretold by the 
mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer, 
he hath so fulfilled." — Acts hi. 18. In the face of these 
facts how can you say that Christ concealed this dogma 
from these Apostles ? 

Second, The necessity of belief. 

On this Mark says : " He that believeth not shall be 
condemned." — xvi. 15. Luke, in his book called The 
Acts of the Apostles, says : "Believe in the Lord Jesus : 
and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." — xv. 31. Why 
did you say Christ concealed the necessity of belief from 
Mark and Luke ? 

Third, The mystery of the second birth. 

132 



MR. INGERSOLL AS A HERMENEUTIST, 133 

On this Matthew says : " Go you, therefore, and teach 
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." — xxviii. 19. 
Mark teaches : " He that believeth, and is baptized, shall 
be saved," — xyi. 16. It does not appear that this doc- 
trine was concealed from these Apostles. 

Ingersoll — " AVhen we remember that eighteen hun- 
dred years ago there was but few people who could write, 
and that a manuscript did not become public in any 
modern sense, it was possible for the gospels to have been 
written with all the foolish claims in reference to mira- 
cles without exciting comment or denial." 

Comment — The gospels and the other writings of the 
New Testament were better known in the age in which 
they were written than any other books, sacred or pro- 
fane. Other books were written for the few, the learned ; 
the books of the New Testament were written for the 
people. They were read every Sunday to the people, and 
their teaching became their rule of conduct and life; 
while the writings of philosophers and profane historians 
were known only to the student ; they do not enter into 
the lives and habits of the people. This is one reason 
why so few of these historians have survived the lapse of 
ages, while the writings of apostles have come down to 
us in all their c ompletenes&. They were therefore public 
and the miracles recorded in them did excite comment 
and caused the conversion of thousands of both Jews and 
Gentiles. 

Ingersoll — " There is not, in all the contemporaneous 
literature of the world, a single word about Christ and 
his Apostles." 

Comment — Whatever it may have been, there is little 
of the literature of that time now extant. But little as 



134 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

it is, we have enough to prove your statement false. Jo- 
sephus was a contemporary of the Apostles. He was born 
in the year 37. In my last article I quoted his testimony 
in reference to Christ : " Now, there was about this time 
Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man. * * 
He drew over to him many of the Jews, and also many 
of the Gentiles. This man was the Christ," etc. 

Ingersoll — " The paragraph in Josephus is admitted 
to be an interpolation." 

Comment — No, sir, it is not admitted, nor even claimed, 
except by a few interested critics like yourself. Learned 
critics have demonstrated that this paragraph is genuine, 
and that it could not have been interpolated. But there 
is still another passage in Josephus, the genuineness of 
which has never been questioned or even suspected. 

In his Antiquities, Book 20, chapter 8, he says : " An- 
anus assembled the Jewish Sanhedrim, and brought be- 
fore it James, the brother of Jesus who is called Christ, 
with some others, whom he delivered over to bd stoned as 
infractors of the law." The James here spoken of was 
the first bishop of Jerusalem, and an Apostle. 

The writings of Suetonius are contemporary literature. 
This author was born in the year 72. He refers to Christ 
when he says that Claudius Caesar expelled the Jews 
from Rome, because they raised continual tumults at the 
instigation of CJmst." — In Claudia, chap. 25. 

The historian Tacitus, born in the year 56, says: "The 
author of that sect (Christians) was Christ, who in the 
reign of Tiberius, was punished with death as a criminal 
by the procurator Pontius Pilate." — Tacitus, Annals, 
Book 15, chap. 44. 

Pliny the younger, born in the year 62, in his cele- 
brated letter to the Emperor Trajan, says that Jesus was 



THE ASCEXSIOX. 135 

worshipped by his followers as God — " They sing among 
themselves, alternately, a hymn to Christ as to God." 

Now, sir, in view of these testimonies, what are we to 
think of your assertion that " There is not, in all the 
contemporaneous literature of the world, a single word 
about Christ and his Apostles?" And what will the 
reader think of your character for veracity ? 

Ixgeksoll — "Neither will it do to say that ' the state- 
ments made by the Evangelists are alike upon every im- 
portant point.' " 

Oo3Imext — It will do to say it, because it is true, and 
because you have given no evidence to the contrary, as we 
shall see. 

Ingeesoll — "If there is anything of importance in 
the New Testament, from a theological stand-point, it is 
the ascension of Christ." 

COM3IEXT — Granted. 

Ingersoll — " Are the statements of the inspired wit- 
nesses alike on this point ?" 

Commext — Yes. But your opponent does not say " in- 
spired witnesses." Christians do not teach that the 
Apostles were inspired witnesses of the events they nar- 
rate. It does not require inspiration to witness a fact. 
This is an illustration of your art in changing words to 
introduce into the question false ideas. The Apostles 
witnessed the events in the life of Christ, as others wit- 
nessed them. But unlike others, they were inspired to 
give a narration of the events they witnessed. You are 
fond of words of double meaning. They give room for 
sophistry. A witness may mean one who has seen* an 
• event take place, or it may mean one who gives testimony 
of what he has seen. The Apostles were not inspired 
witnesses in the first sense, while in the second they were. 



136 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

I mention this merely to show how carefully you are to 
be watched. The statements, then, of the "inspired 
witnesses" are alike on the ascension, 

Ingersoll — " Let us see." 

Comment — Certainly, your desire for information is 
praiseworthy. 

Ingersoll — "Matthew says nothing upon the sub- 
ject." 

Comment — Your opponent said the statements made 
by the Evangelists were alike, etc. He said nothing of 
statement that were not made by this or that Evangelist. 
Matthew's history ends with the resurrection and the 
commission of the Apostles. 

Ingersoll — "To this wonder of wonders Mark de- 
votes one verse : i So then, after the Lord had spoken 
unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the 
right hand of God.' " 

Comment — Is not one verse sufficient to state an im- 
portant fact ? You. no doubt, would have devoted many 
words to this fact, but that was not Mark's style — he was 
not a romancer. The difference between him and you is 
this : He was inspired to write the truth, while you are 
not — at least your writings give no evidence of it. 

Ixgersoll — " Luke, another of the witnesses, says : 
' And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was 
parted from them and carried up into heaven.' " 

Comment — Well, is not this statement and that of 
Mark alike ? 

Ingersoll — "John corroborates Matthew, by saying 
nothing on the subject." 

Comment — John "corroborates" St. Matthew by say- 
ing : "And no man hath ascended into heaven, but he 



THE ASCENSION 137 

that descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who 
is in heaven." — John iii. 13. This is saying something 
on the subject, is it not ? Why did yon overlook this 
text? 

Ingersoll — " Now, we find that the last chapter of 
Mark, after the eighth verse, is an interpolation." 

Comment — Where do yon find that ? Yon have said 
assertions are spurious coins, and yet you would palm 
your " we find" on your reader as genuine truth. Now, 
" we find" nothing of the kind, and when you say you 
have found it you simply take a dishonest advantage of 
your ignorant admirers. That they deserve no better 
treatment at your hands is no excuse for you. The 
verses in the last chapter of St. Mark, which you say are 
interpolated, are found in almost all the ancient manu- 
scripts. The most ancient of the fathers admit them, as 
St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, St. Clement, St. Ambrose, St. 
Augustine, and others. All the oldest Latin, Syriac and 
Arabic copies have them. They must therefore be con- 
sidered genuine until we have some better reason for re- 
jecting them than your " we find." 

Let us now sum up : 

Ingersoll — " (1) Either the ascension of Christ must 
be given up, or (2) it must be admitted that the wit- 
nesses do not agree, and (3) that three of them never 
heard of that stupendous event." 

Comment — First. The ascension of Christ will not be 
given up. It should never have been believed if it could 
be overthrown by the silly trash which you advance as 
arguments. 

Second. The evidence of the three Evangelists whom I 
have quoted does agree, and no man of sense and unbi- 
assed judgment will pretend to the contrary. They all 



138 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

bear unequivocal and uncontradictory evidence to the 
fact of the ascension. 

Third. There are only four evangelists. Three of 
them speak of the ascension, as is seen by the above quo- 
tations. Now where do you find your other three who 
never heard of it ? 

But you contradict yourself. According to your reas- 
oning only one of the Evangelists mentions the ascen- 
sion ; the rest are silent, or never heard of that stupend- 
ous event. Now, if only one one of four witnesses speak, 
how can they contradict each other ? There is such a 
thing as being too smart. You should not let your zeal 
for godlessness run away with your judgment. The con- 
clusion from all this is that the Evangelists do not con- 
tradict each other, and that their testimony is alike on 
the ascension. 

Ingersoll — " Again, if anything could have left its 
" form and pressure on the brain,' it must have been the 
last words of Christ." 

Comment — No doubt of it. What then ? 

Ingersoll — " The last words, according to Matthew, 
are : Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing 
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I have commanded you : and lo, 1 am with 
you always, even to the end of the world. 

Comment — Now, these are not the last words of Christ 
according to Matthew, for Matthew does not say they 
were the last words. Why do you interpolate into the 
gospel of Matthew a statement he never made ? Is it 
through stupidity, or ignorance, or a desire to deceive ? 
You must excuse me, but I must talk according to the 
facts : your statement is absolutely false. Matthew does 



LAST WORDS OF CHRIST. 139 

not pretend to give the last words of Christ. The words, 
Go ye, etc., are simply the last words reported by Mat- 
thew. 

Ln"GERSOLL — "The last words, according to the in- 
spired witness known as Mark, are : ' And these signs shall 
follow them that believe : in my name they shall cast 
out devils,' etc." 

Comment — What I have said above in reference to the 
last words of Matthew are equally applicable here. St. 
Mark does not report these words as the last utterances of 
Christ. They are simply the last words he (Mark) re- 
ports. You can be excused from bad faith here only at 
the expense of your intelligence or integrity. 

Ingersoll — " Luke tells us that the last words uttered 
by Christ with the exception of a blessing, were : 'And 
behold I send forth the promise of mv Father upon 
you,' etc." 

Comment — Luke tells us nothing of the kind ; and it 
is hard to believe that you did not know you were mis- 
representing Luke when you said so. Yon must have an 
unlimited faith in the credulity of this age, and in the 
bottomless ignorance of the class to which you appeal 
when you make such a statement. It is not at all sur- 
prising that great and learned Christian theologians do 
not care to meet you. The reason of their silence is evi- 
dent to men of sense. It is not their duty or business to 
turn aside to meet every blatant blasphemer who wags his 
tongue against Christianity for dollars under the pretense 
of being a philosopher. They decline to talk with you 
about theology on the same principle that a first class 
lawyer would decline to talk Common Law or the Code 
Justinian with a mountebank. 

Ingersoll — " The last words according to John, were : 



140 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

' Peter, seeing him, saith to Jesus : Lord, and what shall 
this man do ? etc." 

Comment — It is needless to tell the reader, after what 
I have said in reference to your falsifications of the other 
Evangelists, that your assertion as to what St. John says 
is utterly false and without a shadow of foundation. 
You are squandering your reputation too cheaply. 

Ingersoll — " An account of the ascension is also given 
in the Acts of the Apostles ; and the last words of Christ, 
according to that inspired witness, are ; ' But ye shall 
receive power,' etc." 

Comment — This is equally as false as what you have 
said about the Gospels. 

Ingersoll — "Luke testifies that Christ ascended on 
the very day of his resurrection." 

Comment — Luke nowhere testifies that Christ ascended 
on the very day of his resurrection. On the contrary he 
tells us in his Acts of the Apostles that "He (Christ) 
showed himself alive after his passion, by many proofs for 
forty days appearing to them and speaking of the king- 
dom of God" — 1-3. Here Luke testifies explicitly as to 
the time of the ascension, whereas in his Gospel he speci- 
fies no time. 

Ingersoll — " These depositions do not agree." 

Comment — It is your travesty of them that does not 
agree. The depositions are alike when fairly and truth- 
fully represented. 

Ingersoll — "Two of the witnesses, Matthew and 
Luke, give the genealogy of Christ, Matthew says that 
there were forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ, 
Luke insists that there were forty-two from Christ to 
David, while Matthew gives the number as twenty-eight. 



GENEALOGY. 141 

It may be said that this is an old objection. An objection 
remains young until it has been answered." 

Commext — It is indeed an old objection, and in this 
it is like all the objections you have made. They are all 
thus far merely the old, oft-repeated, and oft-answered 
ones varnished and revamped into modern parlance. 
They lose some of their force in the translation, but what 
they lose in that way is made up by flippancy and verbal 
flummery. 

Your objection is that Matthew and Luke contradict 
each other in the number of generations. Generation 
has two meanings. It means first, the actual number of 
persons in direct line as, father, son, grand-son, great- 
grand-son, etc. Generation in this sense gives us no 
measure of time, since every individual in the above series 
may have lived from twenty to five hundred years or 
more. This kind of generation is therefore of no use 
whatever in calculating time or historical epochs. It is 
too indefinite. It is however of use to prove legitimacy, 
and the right of inheritance. It is generation in this 
sense that St. Luke traces, because it was his purpose to 
show that Christ was of the direct line of the elder 
branch of the royal family, and that he was the person 
who, if royalty had continued in the family of David, 
would have legally inherited the throne. Luke was deal- 
ing with the question in reference to legitimacy and in- 
heritance — and with no reference to historical time or 
epochs. 

The second meaning of generation has reference to 
time, and denotes the average life of man, which at present 
is supposed to be thirty-three years. As men lived longer 
in the early history of the race than now, the average life 
or generation was much longer. !N"ow Matthew uses the 



142 NOTES ON IXGERSOLL. 

word generation in reference to time — to the average 
duration of life when the prophesies concerning the 
coming of Christ were written — to prove that those pro- 
phesies were verified. His purpose was to show two 
things ; first, that the time announced by the prophets had 
been completed at the advent of Christ, and second, to 
show that Christ was of the royal line of David. Gen- 
erations of time then, in the sense used by Matthew might 
contain two, three or four generations of individuals in 
the sense of Luke. It follows then that as these two 
Evangelists were writing about two different things they 
did not contradict each other. Luke spoke of individual 
life, Matthew of average life. 

Ingersoll — "Is it not wonderful that Luke and 
Matthew do not agree on a single name of Christ's 
ancestors for thirty-seven generations ?" 

Comment — It is wonderful only to those who are 
ignorant of the fact that Matthew gives the ancestors of 
Joseph, while Luke gives the ancestors of Mary the 
the Mother of God, 

Are your ancestors on your mother's side all Inger- 
solls ? Must your maternal and paternal ancestors 
necessarily have the same name? A careful study of 
Christian writers on these subjects would save you a good 
deal of ignorant blundering. 

Ingersoll — " There is a difference of opinion among 
the ' witnesses' as to what the the gospel of Christ is." 

Comment — I think the reader has discovered by this 
time that it is not safe to accept your statements without 
proof of some kind to verify them. Experience has 
proved that something more than your word is necessary. 
You must specify these differences of opinion, quote the 
conflicting texts, and give their references. After you 



ATOXEMEXT. 143 

have done this it will be time to consider your statement. 
We have had enough of loose, indefinite declamation. 

Ixgersoll — "According to these witnesses Christ 
knew nothing of the doctrine of Atonement." 

Comment — In my last article I quoted from those 
three witnesses texts refering to Atonement. This was 
in answer to your statement that those Evangelists knew 
nothing about that dogma. You now repeat the same 
idea in another dress. This time it is Christ Himself 
who knows nothing about it, and you give as evidence of 
this the three Evangelists, whom you assert never men- 
tioned the subject ! ! Xow if it were true (as it is not) 
that these Evangelists never referred to the doctrine of 
Atonement, how can you quote them as witnesses that 
Christ knew nothing of that doctrine ? Your statement 
is false, and without a shadow of evidence of any kind 
whatever to give it even the appearance of truth. Is this 
the kind of stuff you expect the Christian scholar to 
stoop to meet ? 

Ixgersoll — " To my mind the failure of the Evangel- 
ists to agree as to what is necessary for man to do to 
insure the salvation of his soul, is a demonstration that 
they were not inspired." 

Commext — It would be a demonstration to the mind 
of the Christian as well, if there was any such failure to 
agree as you assert. 

If the Evangelists disagreed, or conflicted in their 
testimony, it would follow that they were not all inspired. 
But thus far your effort to prove that they disagree is a 
miserable abortion. If you have nothing better to offer 
than what you have already given to prove disagreement 
among these Evangelists, your case is in a bad way 
indeed. 



144 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

Ingersoll — " Neither do the witnesses agree as to the 
last words of Christ, when he was crucified." 

Comment — You are positive about this. Now let us 
see. 

Ingersoll — " Matthew says that he cried : ' My God, 
My God, why hast thou forsaken me ?' " 

Comment — Does Matthew say that these were the last 
words of Christ? the words are the last reported by 
Matthew but he does not report them as the last words 
of Christ. 

Ingersoll — "Mark agrees with Matthew." 

Comment — Then as Matthew reports no words as the 
last spoken by Christ it follows that Mark did not. So 
much for your " last words" thus far. 

Ingersoll — " Luke testifies that his last words were : 
( Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' " 

Comment — Luke "testifies" to nothing of the kind. 
These are the last words reported by Luke, but he does 
not report them as the last words of Christ. 

Ingersoll — "John states that he cried : 'It is 
finished.' " 

Comment — True, but he does not state that these were 
the last words of Christ. The fact is, none of the Evan- 
gelists report any words as the last words of Christ. It 
is at best a matter of inference what the last words were. 
Therefore when you quote the Evangelists as reporting 
the last words of Christ, you misrepresent them ; and the 
contradictions, which you pretend were made by them, 
exist only in your ignorant or unprincipled misrepresent- 
ations of the gospels. It would be interesting to know by 
what code of morals you are governed, if any. Gautama, 
Confucius or Koang-Foo-Tzee, Zoroaster, Lao-Tzsu, 



MISSION OF THE APOSTLES. 1 45 

Hermes Trismegistus, Moses, and Mahomet, all forbid 
lying in their moral codes. What code do you follow, 
anyhow ? 

Ixgersoll — "John says that Christ, on the day of 

. his resurrection, said to his disciples : e Whosesoevor sins 

ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever 

sins ye retain, they are retained.' The other disciples do 

not record this monstrous passage." 

Comment — The other disciples do not record this pas- 
sage, eh ? Matthew was an apostle and a disciple, was 
he not ? Well, Matthew says : " Verily, I say unto you, 
whatsoever ye shall hind on earth shall be bound in 
heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose upon earth shall 
be loosed in heaven." — xviii. 18. And again : " I will 
give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and 
whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in 
heaven," etc. — xvi. 19. 

This is enough to prove you ignorant or dishonest, and 
you may take your choice of position. You should not 
forget that you are not only sacrificing your own dignity 
and veracity, but you are sacrificing and humbling in the 
dust, so far as one man can do it, the dignity of our com- 
mon manhood, by your false, foolish and reckless state- 
ment. 

Ixgersoll — " They (the Apostles) were not present 
when Christ placed in their hands the keys of heaven and 
hell, and put a world beneath the feet of priests." 

Com^iext — When you say, "They were not present 
when he placed in their hands the keys," etc., you in- 
tended to perpetrate one of those side-splitting jokes 
which are wont to set your audience in a roar. The idea 
of their not being present when he placed in their hands 
the kevs, is droll, is funnv when we come to think of it. 



146 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

But the subject is very serious, and the joke is out of 
place. When we want to enjoy such a thing we go to 
the circus or to the minstrels. But let us return. You 
say that that commission which Christ gave to his Apos- 
tles to pardon sinners " puts a world beneath the feet of 
priests." Does the power of pardoning criminals, which 
is reposed in the hands of the governor, place the people 
of this State at his feet ? Reflect on this for a moment, 
and you will learn that there is more sound than sense 
in your observation. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CONTRADICTIONS — LNGERSOLX'S METHOD OF ACCOUNTING 
FOE THEM — HOW TO BE SAYED — INGERSOLl/S NEW 
PATENT. 

IXGERSOLL — "It is very easy to account for the 
differences and contradictions in these 'depositions' 
by sayirjg that each one told the story as he remembered 
it^ or as he heard it, or that the accounts have been 
changed, but it will not do to say that the witnesses were 
inspired of God." 

Comment — It is easy to account by " saying." — Yes, 
that is the way you account for almost everything. It is 
easy indeed, but it has this disadvantage, it does not 
' account for anything. It has been the misfortune of 
your theological career that you have placed too much 
reliance on " saying" and too little on proving. 

It will be time to account for the contradictions of the 
Evangelists when those contradictions are made apparent. 
Thus far you have not made them visible. Hence your 
cunning method of accounting for them by " saying" is 
gratuitous, uncalled for and entirely inconsistent with 
Christian principles. Christianity must be defended by 
straight, true and correct methods or none. It cannot 
afford to be defended in the spirit in which you attack it 
It must not use sophistry, or cunning, or wit, or jokes, or 
eloquence, or lies. Its platform is truth, and if that 
ground sinks it must go under with it. 

147 



148 NOTES ON LNGERSOLL. 

Inoersoll — -Why should there be- more than one in- 
spired Gospel ?" 

Comment — The fact that there were four inspired Gos- 
pels written is sufficient evidence that there was reason 
for four. God does not act without reason. Hut your 
question shows that you do not understand what is meant 
by inspiration. An inspired history is not necessarily a 
complete history. The inspiration has reference to what 
is said by an inspired writer and not what is not said by 
him, or what he might have said. 

While the four Gospels are inspired histories they are 
not complete and full narrations of all the events and 
circumstances of Christ's life on earth. While inspiration 
impelled the Evangelists and other authors of the New 
Testament to write, and protected them from error in 
writing, it did not impel any of them to write everything 
that could be possibly said on every subject of which they 
treated. If inspiration meant this latter, there would be 
no need for more than one Gospel, and there would be some, 
sense in your question ; but as it does not mean that, 
your qnestion, as I have said, shows that while you talk 
glibly about inspiration you do not know what it means. 

A history of the United States written for the ( Ihinese 
for instance, must be different from one written for the 
American reader. I say different, not contradictory. 
The history for the Chinese must take no common Ameri- 
can or Anglo-Saxon traditions as granted. It must state 
facts and circumstances in such a way as to meet their 
thoughts. To do this requires much explanation. Many 
things must be said that need not be said in a history 
written for the American reader. This is so evidenl that 
further illustration is unnecessary. Now carry thai idea 
into sacred history and you will see a sufficient and satis- 



COKTEADICTIOKS. 149 

factory reason for four instead of one inspired Gospel. 
A Gospel written for the Jews would merely refer to facts, 
traditions, prophesies, customs and habits of life, etc., all 
perfectly familiar to them. A Gospel written for the use 
of the Gentiles would have to explain many things of 
which those people were ignorant. Again, if disputes 
arose as to certain points, the historian would naturally 
devote more attention to those points than he would have 
done had the disputes not arisen. The inspired writers 
were governed by these considerations. They wrote under 
different circumstances and for different purposes; and 
in writing, each was inspired to write what he wrote and 
nothing more. 

Matthew wrote for the Jews, and he devoted himself to 
applying to Christ the prophecies of the Old Testament 
in order to convince the Jews, who believed them, that 
Christ was the Messiah — that in his person the predictions 
of their prophets were accomplished. St. Mark wrote his 
Gospel for the Gentile converts at Eome. His object was 
to prove that Christ was the Sovereign Master of all things, 
and he therefore devotes almost all his chapters to a re- 
cital of the works of Christ, which show his divine power. 
St. Luke wrote his Gospel more particularly for Theophi- 
lus, a pagan convert. His design was to prove that Jesus 
of Nazareth is the true Saviour of men, as the facts and 
circumstances of his life prove. For this purpose he 
makes known certain facts omitted by Matthew and Mark- 
St. John wrote his Gospel to refute the heresies of the 
Cerinthians, Ebionites, and A'alentinians who attacked 
the divinity of Christ and denied many of the facts and 
words of ( 'hrist which the other Evangelists had omitted. 
His primary object was to prove the divinity of Christ, and 
for this purpose he begins his Gospel with these sublime 



150 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

words : "In the beginning was the Word and the Word 
was with God, and the Word was G-od." The Evange- 
lists then differ in their recitals according to the different 
circumstances in which they wrote and the objects they 
had in view. 

Ixgersoll — " There can be only one true account of 
anything." 

Comment — There can be as many true accounts of an 
event as there are points of view to consider the event, or 
circumstances that surround it. Yon confound true with 
complete or adequate. A history that does not give all the 
events and circumstances of a man's life, and their rela- 
tions with others, is true history if its statements are 
true, although it may be incomplete, inadequate and de- 
fective. The four gospels are true histories, although 
none of them are complete, for none of them give aM the 
events in the life of Christ — in fact, all of them taken 
together do not. They are all true, different, yet not 
contradictory. The truth of a history depends on what 
it says, not on what it does not say. When I say, " Wash- 
ington was born, lived, and died," I give a true account. 
It is not as full; complete and adequate as that of Irving 
or Sparks, but it is as true, what's of it. You may ob- 
ject that it is short, which I will not deny, but you cannot 
say it is not true. You simply confound true with com- 
plete or adequate. A school-boy writing his first com- 
position might be excused for an improper use of adjec- 
tives, but a philosopher should be more careful, or more 
honest. 

Ixgersoll — " That which is a test of truth as to ordi- 
nary witnesses is a demonstration againsl their inspira- 
tion." 

Comment — The test of truth in the case of ordinary 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 151 

witnesses is the fact of their agreement. The fact that 
the Evangelists agree in the statements made by them is 
evidence of their truth, just as it is in the case of ordi- 
nary witnesses. Now, how the evidence of their veracity 
can he a demonstration against their inspiration is diffi- 
cult to understand. You have said if they disagree they 
cannot he inspired, and you are right. But you are not 
satisfied ; you now try to prove that if they agree they 
cannot be inspired ! Any remarks of mine on this reason- 
ing of yours would only distract the reader from a con- 
templation of its sublimity. So we will pass in silence to 
other points. 

In"gersoll — " My do3trine is that there is only one 
way to be saved, and that is to act in harmony with your 
surrounding — to live in accordance with the facts of 
your being." 

Comment — Then you have changed your "doctrine" 
considerably since you began your article. Your " doc- 
trine" in the first part of it was that there is no G-od, or 
at least that we cannot know whether there is or not ; 
that a future life was "invented" by Christians to give 
G-od a chance to rectify the mistakes of this. Your 
"doctrine" now is, that there is one way, at least to be 
saved — it is " to act in harmony with your surroundings." 
Well, your surroundings are certainly Christian. If you 
lived among Mormons you should be a Mormon ; if in 
Turkey you should have a harem and sit cross-legged 
like a tailor ; if among Thugs you should be a Thug ; if 
among assassins an assassin ; if among thieves, a thief ! 
This theory has the advantage of being in harmony with 
the " elastic cord of human feeling." 

But you explain. To live in harmony with your sur- 
roundings is to live — '- in accordance with the facts of 



152 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 

your being.'' Good. This is precisely what Christianity 
demands of us, But what are the facts of our being ? 
There's the rub. This question brings the whole con- 
troversy back to the starting-point. It is time you 
should understand that the whole question between you 
and the Christian, as well as between the heathen, the 
pagan, the barbarian and the Christian is : What are tln> 
fads of our being? This question is the root or founda- 
tion of all the differences of opinion that ever existed in 
the world as to man, his duties and his obligations. It 
is the question that philosophers in all ages have tried in 
vain to solve, and which the Christian believes unaided 
reason cannot solve. 

What am I? Whence came I ? Whither am I drift- 
ing ? Your answer to these questions is : I do not know. 
Your reply is true, although no answer. 

It is a common understanding among men of sense that 
when a man confesses ignorance of a subject, he should 
not force himself to the front and confuse investigation 
by his ignorant, garrulous talk. If he confessedly knows 
nothing of the subject under investigation, it is incum- 
bent on him, as a man of sense, to hold his tongue. Ig- 
norance is no disgrace where it is not one's own fault, but 
there is nothing so admirable in an ignorant man as a 
quiet tongue and an attentive ear : and there is nothing 
more pitiable and detestable in God's universe than an 
ignorant man trying to play the role of a teacher of man- 
kind. 

What are tin* facts of our being? 

It is the mission of the true religion to answer this 
question. And by God's help it has been answering it 
and dinning it into the ears of humanity, as it surges by 
generation after generation, from the time of Moses down 



*'THE FACTS OF OUR BELtfG." 153 

to the year of our Lord 1883, and it will continue to do 
so until the angel of eternity, calls the muster-roll of 
time. Yoltaires, Frerets, Gibbons, Diderots, Paines and 
Ingersolls will appear from time to time to curse the 
moral world, as plagues, small-pox, leprosy and insanity 
have cursed the physical world. But Christianity is des- 
tined to survive the one, as the human race survived the 
other. t 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE HON T EST INFIDEL — THE UPRIGHT ATHEIST — LUNA- 
TICS AXD IDIOTS — JUDAS ISCARIOT — HOW ? 

INGERSOLL — " For the honest infidel, according to 
the American evangelical pulpit, there is no heaven." 

Comment — The cook-book says, the first step in cook- 
ing a hare is to catch it. I do not believe any infidel will 
ever be damned for his honesty. I have no authority to 
speak for the American Evangelical pulpit, but I suppose 
if it could be convinced of the " honesty" of an infidel, 
and his decency in the other respects, it would check him 
through as a victim of defective phrenal development . 

Ingersoll — "For the upright atheist there is nothing 
in another world but punishment." 

Comment — The upright or downright atheist will no 
doubt be treated as the upright rebel or traitor is treated 
by the government whose laws lis defies, and whose 
authority he rejects. Christianity teaches that Cod loves 
the honest man, and he will never punish him for his 
honest convictions ; it teaches also that Cod, who is in- 
finitely wise, knows the difference between an honest 
man and a loquacious demagogue. Christianity teaches 
that honesty is an affair of the heart and conscience and 
not a matter of word spinning, or gush. 

Ingersoll — "Mr. Black admits that lunatics and 
idiots are in no danger of hell." 

Comment — That should be a consolation to m my, for 
we are told that the number of fools is infinite. 

154 



LUNATICS AMD IDIOTS. 155 

Ixgersoll — "This being so, his God should have 
created only lunatics and idiots." 

Comment — He has in his inscrutable ways created 
more than we poor finite creatures can understand the 
reason for, and he permits them to play their antics 
before high heaven to an extent that can be explained 
only by reference to his infinite patience. 

Ixgersoll — "Why should the fatal gift of brain be 
given to any human being, if such gift renders him liable 
to eternal hell?" 

Commext — Eeason was given to man to be used not to 
be abused. According to your theory no man should be 
allowed to possess or have anything that could render 
him liable to pain, suffering or misfortune of any kind. 
Eeflect for a moment and see where this leads. You 
should not he trusted with a pistol, or a razor, or a pen- 
knife, for you might blow your brains out with one or 
cut your throat with the other. A man should not be 
permitted to learn to write because it renders him liable 
to commit forgery ; his hands should be cut off because 
they render him liable to steal or murder and to the con- 
sequent punishment. You should not have the danger- 
ous liberty of eating lest you might eat too much and be 
sick : and your tongue should be dumb lest you might 
be liable to talk nonsense or commit perjury. What 
would you think or say of God, if to free us from all 
possible danger, he should deprive us of every faculty 
that may be abused, of everything that constitutes us 
men, — everything that makes life worth living ? 

Ixgersoll — "Better be an idiot in this world, if you 
can be a seraph in the next." 

Commext— Better be an idiot saved than a philosopher 
damned. But fortunately for men of common average 



156 NOTES ON INGEBSOLL. 

sense there is a middle course. Idiots and philosophers 
are extremes — phenomenal and exceptional. The major- 
ity of mankind are neither, while they arc sometimes the 
victims of both. 

Ingersoll — "A being of infinite wisdom has no right 
to create a person destined to everlasting pain.*' 

Comment — Passing the question of right, which is to 
no purpose here, who holds that God created any being 
to be damned ? God created man to enjoy happiness for 
ever, and no man will be damned but he who damns him- 
self. 

Ingersoll — "For nearly two thousand years Judas 
Iscariot has been execrated by mankind ; and yet, if the 
doctrine of the atonement is true, upon his treachery 
hung the plan of salvation.-' 

Comment — Judas is justly execrated because he was a 
traitor and gave away his friend. His treason has noth- 
ing to do with the doctrine of atonement. Judas was a 
free agent. The plan of salvation involved the death of 
Christ, but not by the treason of Judas. 

Ingersoll — " Suppose Judas had known of this plan 
— known that he was selected by Christ for that very 
purpose, that Christ was depending on him." 

Comment — Suppose that he was not selected for this 
very purpose ; that Christ was not depending on him. 
Where did you learn that Judas was selected for this 
very purpose, or that Christ depended on him ? 

Ingersoll — " And suppose." 

Comment — No, sir : we must suppose nothing. I 
want facts, and not sup positions or guesses. 

Ingersoll — " Are you willing to rely upon an argu- 
ment that justifies the treachery of that wretch (Judas)?" 



JUDAS ISCAEIOT. 157 

Commext — Xo, I am not, any more than I am ready 
to rely upon your assertions. Judas was a bad man, but 
there are worse men living than he. He did not go 
lecturing about Judea and boasting of his crime, 
and ridiculing the Christ whom he had betrayed — 
he went and hanged himself. I do not commend 
his desperate act, because suicide is murder, but the 
fellow showed some respect for the opinions of his 
fellow-men by ridding them of his detestable presence- 
He loved money, but in this he was not alone. There 
were no lecture bureaus in those days, and he felt that his 
career was at an end. Had he known that others would 
come to continue his dirty work he might have been ter- 
rified, and perhaps repented, but not foreseeing this he 
only hanged himself. 

Ixgersoll — " I insisted upon knowing how the suffer- 
ings of an innocent man could satisfy justice for the sins 
of the guilty." 

Comment — It would have been wiser to have insisted 
upon knowing the fact than upon knowing the how of it. 
There are many facts that you know and admit, and yet 
if you were asked the how of them you could not answer. 
How do you think ? How do you apprehend a thought ? 
How do you know that you are, or that you are Inger- 
soll ? Would it be just to infer that you know nothing 
because you cannot explain " how" you know ? This is 
precisely what you expect of your opponent. You ask, 
how can the suffering of the innocent satisfy for the sins 
of the guilty ? Your opponent replies by saying that the 
answer involves a question of metaphysics. He is, in my 
opinion, wrong in this, because he confounds the super- 
natural with the metaphysical. These terms are not 
synonyms. To answer your question he had no need to 



158 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

appeal to metaphysics ; in doing so he appealed to the 
wrong court. His appeal should have been to reason ; he 
should have confined himself to the fact or the possibility 
of it, and not *to the how of it. We don't know the 
"how" of anything ; and the philosopher who asks it and 
expects an adequate answer is nothing better than an end 
man in a minstrel show. Conundrums are associated with 
tambourine and burnt cork. Lecturers who make pre- 
tensions to philosophy should not infringe on the amusing 
trade of honest minstrelsy. 

Ixgersoll — " I insisted upon knowing how the suffer- 
ings of an innocent man can satisfy justice for the sins 
of the guilty." 

Comment — Logicians tell us that most disputes and 
misunderstandings arise from an abuse or misuse of words 
— the common symbols of thought. Honest words are 
often drafted into the service of sophistry and made to 
do duty under false colors. The art of refuting fallacies 
consists mainly in liberating these words from enforced 
service. The only difficulty in your question arises from 
the use or misuse of the word justice. Until that word is 
made to express a definite idea common to your mind and 
mine, your question is unintelligible, and not susceptible 
of an intelligent answer. If I should give an answer 
based on some one of the many meanings of the word, it 
might not be the meaning Avhich you attach to it, and 
hence my answer, right or wrong, could not meet your 
thought, or the difficulty as it exists in your mind. This 
shows with what great care intelligent men should use 
. words. 

What then do you mean by the word justice as used in 
your question ? Do you mean justice in the abstract ? 
Justice in abstract is a mere abstraction having no entity 



JUSTICE. 159 

of its own. A pure abstraction can induce no obligations, 
no duties, no sufferings of innocent or guilty. 

Do you mean what theologians call original justice ? 
Original justice is the subjection of the body to the 
mind ; the subjection of the will to reason ; and the sub- 
jection of reason to Gcd. This is the justice that 
was lost by Adam's fall and restored by the sufferings of 
Christ. 

Do you mean divine justice ? That, so far as creatures 
are practically concerned, is the will of God, and he is free 
to determine the nature of atonement. 

Do you mean justice in its theological sense ? In that 
sense it is a moral virtue or influence constantly inclining 
the will of man to render to every one his own. This 
meaning can have no application to your question. 

Do you mean legal justice? Legal justice is that 
which co-orders the parts or individuals of a community 
in reference to the whole, and inclines the individual to 
render to the community what is necessary for the com- 
mon good. 

Do you mean distributive justice ? This directs the 
whole in reference to its parts — the community in its ac- 
tion towards the individual. 

There remain commutative justice, which regulates the 
actions of a citizen to his fellow- citizen, and vindicative 
justice, by which the superior visits punishment or par- 
don on the guilty. You see the word justice has many 
meanings. As you are a theologian, philosopher and law- 
yer, you should be able to say in what sense you use the 
word and you must not imagine your opponent to be fool 
enough to commit himself to any answer till he knows 
what your question means. 

The fallacy of your question consists in this : It sup- 



160 NOTES ON LNGEBSOLL. 

poses justice to be a thing existing independent of God 
and man, whereas it is an attribute, in different degrees. 
of both God and man, and has no existence outside of 
them. 

But I am not done with jour question yet. You ask : 
how can the sufferings of the innocent satisfy for the sins 
of the guilty ? What do you mean by " satisfy ?" Do 
you mean it in the sense of an equivalent ? If so, no 
sufferings of the innocent or the guilty can satisfy for 
sin, for suffering, whether voluntary or enforced, is not 
an equivalent or an equation of sin. The murderer does 
not " satisfy" either God or man by yielding up his life 
at the end of a rope ; nor would a volunteer substitute 
" satisfy." His death is no equivalent for his crime. If 
sufferings were an equation of crime, crime would cease 
to be crime to him who accepts the punishment. The 
murderer would cease to be a murderer, the thief cease 
to be a thief on the infliction of punishment. If suffer- 
ing alone could " satisfy" for sin, there would and could 
be no eternal hell, for a time would necessarily come 
when the suffering would square with the offence. Mere 
suffering, then, of innocent or guilty, does not satisfy 
for sin ; and this fact takes the bottom out of your ques- 
tion. 

Again. You ask : How can the sufferings of the in- 
nocent satisfy for the sins of the guilty ? The sufferings 
of the innocent do not satisfy for the sins of the guilty. 
They can, however, satisfy for the sufferings due to the 
sins of the guilty, which is quite another thing. You 
can pay a fine of live dollars for a loafer who has commit- 
ted an assault, and save him the sufferings of six months 
in the workhouse ; but while your vicarious sufferings to 
the extent of five dollars remit the punishment, they do 



JUSTICE. 161 

not " satisfy" for the offence. I think by this time the 
reader sees that the question upon which you "insisted" 
means nothing when cleared and cleaned of its sophistry 
and words of double meaning. Mr. Black was wrong- 
when he said it raised a "metaphysical question." He 
should have said it raised a psychological or phrenological 
question, involving the condition of your mind or brain, 
when you asked it. 

Ingersoll — " To answer an argument, is it only neces- 
sary to say that it raises a metaphysical question ?" 

Comment — No ; but a question, to deserve an answer, 
should have some sense in it. 



CHAPTER XXL 

MULISH STUBBORNESS — VERSUS RATIONAL OBEDIENCE — 
STANDARD OF RIGHT AND WRONG, WHAT IS IT? 
MR. INGERSOLL's FOOT-LIGHT DEFINITIONS WORTH- 
LESS — IS MURDER A CRIME OR A VIRTUE? 

IXGERSOLL — " The idea of non-resistance never oc- 
curred to a man who had the power to protect himself. 
This doctrine is the child of weakness, born when resist- 
ance was impossible." 

Comment — This is one of your soft, indefinite generali- 
ties. Let us see what it means and what it is worth 
practically. 

Non-resistance to what? Resistance or non-resistance 
has place only where there is aggression. Agression 
may be just or unjust, and the lawfulness of resistance to 
it depends on this distinction. Aggression is any in- 
fringement whatever on your natural rights. Your 
natural rights are necessarily limited or infringed on by 
society. The individual must yield to society many of 
his natural rights for the common good. Without this, 
society would be impossible. Society is necessary for 
human life, for man is a social being, and can not live 
out of society. Therefore the aggessions which society 
makes on the natural rights of the individual are just. 
and therefore the individual yields them up, not because 
he must but because he ought to. It is a question of duty. 
Now societv aggresses on your natural rights for the 



MULISH STUBBOEXESS. 163 

common good. You yield because you consider the 
benefit you derive from living in society a fair set-off to 
the rights which you give up. You do not resist, because 
common sense teaches you, you would be a fool if you 
did. Then the idea of non-resistance must have occurred 
to you otherwise you would not consent to the arrange- 
ment. Again. Society, to exist, must have government, 
which costs money. To meet the expenses the tax collec- 
tor aggresses on you. You feel that the demand is just, 
and you yield and pay, not because you know you can be 
made to pay, but because you know you ought to — here 
again the idea of non-resistance. 

The idea of non-resistance occurs to every honest man 
who lives in society, and who believes it his duty to obey 
the laws and support his government. Woe to that 
government whose citizens obey only because they must, 
or because they cannot protect themselves against the 
power that enforces law. Such citizens cannot be trusted 
in time of danger. They are latent rebels, every one of 
them. Resistance to the just requirements of law is sin- 
ful, and non-resistance a duty. Hence the idea of it 
should and does occur to every honest loyal citizen. 

You will say that you meant non-resistance to unjust 
power or tyranny. Probably you did. But you did not 
say it, and a man of your power of talk is expected to say 
what he means. 

Ixgebsoll — " I do not believe in the doctrine of non- 
resistance." 

Commext — Non-resistance to what? As you reject 
the doctrine of non-resistance without limitation, it 
follows that you hold the opposite doctrine without limi- 
tation, which is that you believe in resistance to every- 
thing. But you are not original in this. The world is 



164 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

familiar with men of this kind, and since the advent of 
Christianity has provided for them as comfortably as cir- 
cumstances would permit. 

Ingersoll — " Mr. Black insists that without belief in 
God there can be no perception of right and wrong, and 
that it is impossible for an atheist to have a conscience. 

Comment — Mr. Black makes no such statement, — 
insists on neither of the things which you attribute to 
him. Why this persistent misrepresentation? To give 
the reader an idea of your sense of "honor bright" and 
your method of meeting an opponent, I will here quote 
Mr. Black's words on this point. He says : " Here let me 
call attention to the difficulty of reasoning about justice 
with a man who has no acknowledged standard of right 
and wrong. What is justice? that which accords with 
law ; and the supreme law is the will of God. But I am 
dealing with an adversary who does not admit that there 
is a God ; then for him there is no standard at all ; one 
thing is as right as another, and all things are equally 
wrong. Without a sovereign ruler there is no law, and 
where there is no law there can be no transgression. It 
is the misfortune of the atheistic theory that it makes 
the moral world an anarchy, it refers all ethical questions 
to that confused tribunal where chaos sits as umpire, and 
' by decision more embroils the fray.' But through the 
whole of this (IngersolPs) paper there runs a vein of pre 
sumptuous egotism which says as plainly as words can 
speak it that the author holds himself to be the ultimate 
judge of all good and evil ; what he approves is right, 
and what he dislikes is certainly wrong. Of course I 
concede nothing to a claim like that." — North A n irican 
Review for August, 1881, page 135. 

This is the only paragraph in your opponent's article 



STANDARD OF RIGHT AND WRONG. 165 

referring to this subject. Where does he insist that 
without a belief in God there can be no 'perception of 
right and wrong or that it is impossible for an atheist to 
have a conscience ? There is no mention of perception 
of right and wrong — no mention of conscience in the 
whole paragraph. He says that you denying God have 
no standard of right and wrong. Now it does not re- 
quire much brains or education to distinguish between a 
perception of right and a standard of right. A percep- 
tion of right is as different from the standard of right as 
the perception of length is from a yardstick by which 
length is measured. Your next statement illustrates 
this : 

Ingersoll — " Mr. Black, the Christian, the believer in 
God, upholds wars of extermination. I denounce such 
wars as murders." 

Comment — Now how is this difference of opinion 
between you and Mr. Black to be determined? Your 
conscience tells you that such wars are murders ; his con- 
science tells him the contrary. "Whose conscience teaches 
the right ? His opinion of right and wrong is evidently 
different from yours. Which of you is right ? And how 
is it to be determined ? He will not yield his judgment 
to yours ; you will not yield yours to him. What is to 
be done ? Will you appeal *to reason ? But his reason 
and yours have already drawn their conclusions, and they 
are opposed to each other. Will you appeal to force ? 
Then mi^ht makes right. Then slavery is right as long 
as it can be enforced : and polygamy is right in Turkey, 
and in Utah, since it prevails in those places, and that 
which prevails has for the time at least, the superior 
force behind it. Do you appeal to popular sentiment ? 
If so polygamy is right in Turkey and Utah, since popular 



166 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

sentiment is in its favor ; and for the same reason slavery 
was right in the south. All these appeals failing to solve 
the difficulty, you and your opponent must fix upon a 
standard or measure, or norm of right and wrong. 

To illustrate Black's idea more clearly, let us suppose 
that the difference of opinion between you and him is in 
reference to the length of a piece of cloth. You hold it 
is fifty yards long ; he that it is only ten. It cannot be 
determined by loud talk or eloquent denunciation. You 
must both appeal to a common measure known to and 
admitted by both of you — a yardstick for instance. The 
measure is applied to the cloth, and its actual length is 
determined. It was the want of a common measure or 
standard -like this that Mr. Black called attention to as 
an insurmountable obstacle in debating ethical questions 
with you. He had a standard, the will of God ; you have 
none. Between him and you then, there is no common, 
standard, and hence the difficulty of arguing with yon. 

Ingersoll — "Yet I am told that I have no knowledge 
of right and wrong." 

Comment — Until you have a criterion, or standard of 
right and wrong, you cannot determine what is right or 
what is wrong; and as long as you cannot do this, you 
cannot claim knowledge on the subject. You may have 
"notions" or "opinions" but knowledge, you cannot 
claim. 

Ingersoll — "What is right or what is wronq ?" 

Comment — That cannot be determined without a stan- 
dard or common measure, no more than the question, 
what is lawful, can be answered without a knowledge of 
what is law. 

Ingersoll — "Everything is right that tends to the 
happiness of mankind." 



HIS DEFINITIONS WORTHLESS. 167 

Comment — Granted. But who is to determine what 
tends to the happiness of mankind ? Is every action of 
your life governed by that vague rule ? Do you before 
performing an act, pause to reflect whether that act in 
the long run, in all the eventualities of human existence 
here and hereafter, will tend in the general sum to the 
happiness of mankind ? Of course you don't. Such a 
calculation is beyond the power of man, hence your 
definition of right is a wretched humbug. 

Ingersoll — " And everything is wrong that increases 
the sum of human misery." 

Comment — Certainly. But who is to determine which 
of all, and every act of his increases the sum of human 
misery ? Your definition of wrong is as vague and un- 
satisfactory as your definition of right. 

Ingersoll — " What is conscience ?" 

Comment — From the answer you give to your own 
question it is evident that you do not know what it 
means, and I will therefore give you a definition of the 
word as understood by Christians. Conscience is a 
practical judgment which passes on each and every act of 
our life, and determines, before we perform the act, whe- 
ther it is right or wrong. It does not determine what is 
right or wrong in the abstract, that is the office of the 
moral intellect. It is not the power of realizing vividly the 
sufferings of others as you dogmatically state. The word 
for that is sympathy, or philanthrophy, not conscience. 

Ingersoll — " Consequences determine the quality of 
an action." 

Comment — This then is your standard by which to 
determine whether a human act is good or evil, wicked or 
holy. It is a. remarkable coincidence that the assassin of 



168 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

President Garfield justified his act on this very principle. 
In his last words on the scaffold he said : " only good has 
come from it." 

Let us examine this standard and see what it means, 
and what it is practically worth. According to this stan- 
dard or criterion, the quality of a human act cannot be 
determined until all its consequences are known. But 
the full and ultimate consequences of no act can be 
known by man, for the consequences of an act become in 
their turn the causes of other acts whose consequences 
are the causes of other acts still, and thus on indefinitely. 
To determine the quality of an act one must know whe- 
ther the sum of all these consequences is good or bad ; 
or, if any one consequence can indicate the nature of the 
act, it is necessary to know which of this almost limitless 
multitude of effects is the one which does so. Now, no 
man can know this ; and hence according to your criter- 
ion, no man can know the nature of any given act. Your 
standard then affords man no practical information as to 
the nature of any act which he may be called upon to 
perform. It is therefore utterly worthless. 

Again : even if it were ganted that consequences deter- 
mine the quality of an action, the difficulty still remains, 
for what or who is to determine the quality of these con- 
sequences themselves ? 

Ingersoll — "If consequences are good, so is the 
action." 

Comment — According to this dictum, you cannot say 
a cold blooded murder or an assassination is good or bad 
until you have learned the consequences of it ! The 
consequences of Garfield's taking off can never be known 
to man. Then according to your philosophy it can 
never be known whether his murder was a crime or a vir- 



IS MURDER A VIRTUE OR A CRIME? 169 

tue ! Are you not afraid that your philosophy may put 
a bee into the head of some religious fanatic, who, misled 
by your teachings, might consider his killing of you a 
virtuous and holy act, foolishly imagining that the result 
of that act might, in its consequences, prove beneficial to 
society and religion ? I, as a Christian, condemn that 
act beforehand, as a crime deserving the eternal torments 
of hell; but you could not consistently condemn it be- 
cause according to your infidel theory, the act cannot be 
said to be evil or wicked till its consequences are known. 
As the consequences of your death cannot be known, it 
follows that your murder might be a good or bad act ! 
This is the result or consequence of your philosophy. 
From a Christian point of view it is a very bad conse- 
quence, and therefore, if there is any virtue in logic, your 
philosophy is bad. The Christian holds not only that 
murder is a crime, but that even the intention, determin- 
ation or unactuated resolve is a crime, deserving of hell. 
It is thus that the Christian religion strikes at the very 
root of this murderous propensity in man, and kills the 
dragon before he issues from his innermost den in the 
human heart. The doctrine that acts take their nature 
and quality from their results is a logical and necessary 
consequence of the denial of God. It destroys individual 
responsibility and is subversive of all government and 
social order. It denies all appeal to right, and destroys 
not only justice but the very idea of it. It contemplates 
nothing but results, — physical, cognizable results. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ACTIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES — -EXPERIENCE NO 
STANDARD OF RIGHT AND WRONG — SOME OF MR. IN- 
GERSOLL'S PLAUSIBLE NONSENSE — HIS CHARACTER 
IN A FOCUS — A CHALLENGE TO THE GLIB LITTLE 
WHIFFETS OF THE INGERSOLL SCHOOL. 

INGERSOLL — " If actions had no consequences, they 
would be neither good nor bad." 

Comment — Which is the same as saying if actions were 
not actions they would not be actions. Actions are as 
inseparable from consequences, as they are from their 
actors. You can no more imagine an act without a con- 
sequence than you can an act without an actor. In fact, 
the consequences of acts are simply the acts themselves 
continued under new forms. But while every act has 
consequences, it does not follow, as we have seen, that it 
takes its quality from those consequences. 

Ingersoll — " Man did not get his knowledge of con- 
sequences of actions from God, but from experience and 
reason." 

Comment — As man has not an adequate knowledge of 
all the consequences of actions, it follows that he did not 
get it from experience and reason, and no Christian ever 
held that man gets his knowledge of consequences of all 
acts from God. Our knowledge of results even of physi- 
cal acts is limited to a very narrow circle. As there are 
two orders of acts, physical and intellectual, so there are 

170 



ACTIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES. 171 

two orders of results, physical and intellectual, or moral. 
Man cannot tell the ultimate result of the simplest purely 
physical act. Cast a pebble into the ocean, and what are 
the consequences ? If we apply Newton's law of gravita- 
tion to this simple physical act we find that in time it 
will change the relative positions of every atom of all the 
waters on the face of the globe. Not only this, it will 
change the relations of every molecule of matter in the 
universe ; change the course of the moon, which recog- 
nizes the event by an actual and real, though immeasura- 
ble, perturbation. These changes will continue as long- 
as matter and its law last, for the arrangement of the 
niolecules of matter will never again be the same as they 
would have been if that pebble had not been cast. This 
is a mere general outline of the limitless results of that 
act. Now, who can tell or know, but G-od, these results 
in detail ? 

The results of moral or human acts are still more diffi- 
cult to know, for a human act, that is an intellectual act, 
has its countless effects in the intellectual world in time 
and eternity. A false principle taught to a child will grow 
with it and spread from it to others, and from these others 
to yet others and thus on through the ages, and when time 
ceases it will continue into eternity and affect heaven and 
hell. Thus this one act of a false teacher changes the cur- 
rent and harmony of the moral world. This is a general 
outline ; but who can tell us the nature of each individual 
result — of each link in the endless chain ? To know all 
these consequences by experience we must actually exper- 
ience them; we must not only experience them individually 
and in detail, but we must also experience their united and 
combined result. This is a task beyond the powers of the 
human race combined. Hence to talk of learning results 



172 NOTES ON IXGERSOLL. 

by experience is to babble nonsense like an infant. That 
man did not get all his knowledge of the consequences of 
physical acts from God directly we admit, with astonish- 
ment that a man of your calibre should deem it necessary 
to state it. We must, however, assert that man cannot 
associate facts with prior facts, in the relation of cause 
and effect, without an intuition or primary revelation of 
that relation between two events which is called cause- 
and effect. In other words, the human mind could never 
associate two events in the relation to each other of cause 
and effect unless the idea of this relationship had been 
revealed by God in some manner. As the fashion of 
denying everything is so popular we may as well join in 
the rout and deny that there is any such relation as cause 
and effect, or cause and consequence. And as long as 
you deny the existence of the first cause we must deny 
in toto that sequence of events known as cause and effect. 
Then until you prove that there are such things as causes 
and effects, the standard of morality which you deduce 
from them is but the baseless fabric of a dream. Denial, 
you will observe, is a two-edged sword. You seem to 
have taken it into your head that Christians admit any- 
thing and everything that brings grist to your infidel 
mill, and that anything you " admit" needs no further 
proof. In this you are mistaken. The Christian grants 
you nothing — absolutely nothing. And unless you admit 
a first cause, God, he denies the existence of all causes 
whatsoever, and therefore of all effects. If you deny God 
you deprive yourself of the right to base a standard of 
morals on causes and effects, because without God, the 
first cause, they are inconceivable. 

Ingersoll — " If man by actual experience discovered 
the right and wrong of actions, is it not utterly illogical 



EXPERIENCE NO STANDARD. 173 

to declare that they who do not believe in God can have 
no standard of right or wrong ?" 

Comment — As man cannot by actual experience dis- 
cover the right and wrong of actions, it follows that he 
nmst learn it in some other way, and as there is no other 
way left bnt to learn it from God, it is most logical to 
declare that they who do not believe in God cannot have 
the true standard of right and wrong. Man cannot learn 
the right and wrong of actions by experience, for all 
Iranian experience is necessarily incomplete, and all 
knowledge derived from incomplete experience must be 
incomplete also. Hence a standard of right and wrong* 
that is derived from incomplete experience must neces- 
sarily be incomplete, imperfect, defective — in a word, 
worthless. 

We may learn some things from the experience of the 
past, but if you deny divine teaching how can you know 
that the experience of the future may not cause us to 
reject all those things which you imagine the experience 
of the past has taught us ? How do you know but that 
the experience of the future may demonstrate that poly- 
gamy and slavery and wars are right, because in the long- 
run they may prove beneficial to society ? How can you 
assert with any show of consistency, that these are wrong 
since experience has not as yet spoken its last words 
about them ? 

I n gersoll — " Consecpiences are the standard by which 
actions are judged." 

Comment — Then since the consequences of acts can- 
not be known, this standard cannot be known. Philoso- 
phers heretofore held that effects took their nature from 
their cause, and not the cause from the effects. They 
could not see how that which is could take its nature 



174 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

from that which is not, or how an effect could be the 
cause of its own cause's nature. They were keen-sighted 
enough to see that this involved the dogma of Lord Dun- 
dreary, that the tail wags the dog. 

Ingersoll — " God or no God, larceny is an enemy of 
industry." 

Comment — To say an act is a larceny is to determine 
its nature, its quality. You have said that the quality of 
an action is determined by its consequences. How then 
can you assert that any given act is a larceny till its con- 
sequences are known ? To assert larceny, you must as- 
sert it of particular acts, for larceny in the abstract is 
simply nothing, and can have none but abstract conse- 
quences, which are no consequences at all, and therefore 
cannot be an enemy of industry, unless it be industry in 
the abstract, which again is no industry at all. Larceny, 
to injure industry, must be larceny in act and practice — 
the act of A., B. or C. But how can you assert that the 
act of A., B. or C. is evil or larcenous till its consequences 
are known ? for, according to your philosophy, the nature 
of the act of A., B. or C. can be known and judged only 
by its consequences. 

Ingersoll — " Industry is the mother of prosperity." 

Comment — Industry, aside from industrious acts, is an 
abstraction, having no more reality than larceny — aside 
from a larcenous act. Industry, to exist, must exist as 
the acts of A., B. or 0. But here you are again met by 
your philosophy that "consequences determine the qual- 
ity of actions," hence you cannot assert that the actions 
of A., B. or C. are industrious or idle till you know the 
consequences. 

Ingersoll — " Prosperity is good." 

Comment — According to your st<in<!<ir<i prosperity is 



PLAUSIBLE NONSENSE. 175 

good only when consequences are good. But the philos- 
ophy of history teaches that prosperity leads to the 
downfall of nations as well as individuals. What did 
prosperity do for Egypt, Greece and Rome ? It made the 
people luxurious, voluptuous and imbecile, and buried 
the monuments of hardier ages in ruins. It was the 
siren that led Hannibal, Alexander and Ca?sar to untimely 
graves, and Napoleon to Moscow and Waterloo. Pros- 
perity leads to decay, national, individual, intellectual, 
moral and physical. When prosperity, is at its zenith, 
decay is at the door ; when the tree is in full bloom there 
is but one step to the sere and yellow leaf. Prosperity 
has evil consequences ; and if, as you say, consequences 
determine the quality of actions, how can prosperity be 
I? 



Again. Prosperity, aside from those who prosper, is an 
abstraction, nothing, and therefore the good you assert 
of it is equally an abstraction, a delusion and a snare. 

Ingersoll — " God or no God, murder is a crime." 
Comment — It is a bad thing for one to forget one's 
own principles. You have said that " consequences de- 
termine the quality of actions." How then can you as- 
sert that murder is a crime until you know the conse- 
quences of it ? Murder in the abstract is at best only a 
crime in the abstract, which is no crime at all. Murder, 
to exist, must be the act of A., B. or C. But how can 
you assert that the act of A., B. or C. is murder, or a 
crime, until you know its consequences ? According to 
the new standard of right and wrong set up by you; I 
have the same right to assert that murder is a virtue as 
you have to assert it is a crime, until all the consequences 
of the so-called murderous act are known, since these 
consequences must determine the nature of the act. 



176 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

Ingersoll — "There has always been a law against 
larceny." 

Comment — Yes, bnt the law is unjust if larceny be a 
virtue. And you cannot assert it is not, as long as all 
the consequences of the larceny are not known, since 
they are, according to you, the standard by which the 
act is to be judged. If there is no God the law against 
larceny has no moral or binding obligation, for if made 
by man it must have been made by those who had, against 
those who had not. 

But those who have not are in the majority in the 
world, and a minority have no right to impose laws on 
the majority. If there is no God, the real thieves are 
those who have and hold the goods of this world from 
the great majority who have not. This is in fact the 
doctrine of your infidel confreres, the communists of 
France. Proudhon, a prophet of infidelity, lays it down 
as a maxim that " property is robbery." The difference 
between you and Proudhon is this : he denies God and 
carries that denial to its logical consequences, while you, 
without an atom of logic in your head, deny God, and 
yet assert the sacredness of property. If there be no 
God, Proudhon is right ; but God or no God, you are in- 
consistent and illogical. 

Ingersoll — " As long as men object to being killed, 
murder will be illegal." 

Comment — Convicted murderers object to being killed: 
is it therefore murder or illegal to execute them ? But 
here again you show a bad memory. Only live lines 
above you say : " Consequences are the standard by which 
actions are judged." and now you tell us that the objection 
of men to being killed constitutes the illegality of mur- 
der ! Now, which of these statements do you intend us to 



HIS CHARACTER IN A FOCUS. 177 

believe ? Of course we cannot believe them both, since 
they are contradictory. This is the consequence of try- 
ing to reason without a standard of truth and morality. 

Ingersoll — " According to Mr. Black, the man who 
does not believe in a Supreme Being acknowledges no 
standard of right and wrong." 

Comment — You ought to be ashamed to misrepresent 
an honorable antagonist. Mr. Black never said that, nor 
anything like it, nor anything from which such an infer- 
ence could be drawn. He complained of the difficulty of 
arguing with a man like you who had no acknowledged 
standard of right and wrong. That his complaint was 
just is evident from the fact that in your reply to him you 
give half a dozen different standards, and all contradic- 
tory, as we have just seen. 

Ingersoll — " Is it possible that only those who be- 
lieve in the God who persecuted for opinion's sake have 
any standard of right and wrong ?" 

Comment — Only those who believe in the true God, 
whom you falsely accuse of persecuting, can have the 
true standard of right and wrong. That those who do 
not believe in him may have some standard is evident 
from the fact that you have laid down half a dozen stan- 
dards, such as they are ; and no doubt you could give 
more if the exigencies of your argument required it. 
But when Mr. Black spoke of a standard he did not mean 
India rubber strings. Every man has, or ought to have, 
some one standard by which to regulate his conscience 
and his acts, but you have half a dozen worthless ones ; 
hence the difficulty of knowing where to find you. Mr. 
Black's complaint is that you have no standard that holds 
you, or that prevents you from acting like the little joker 
in the game of thimble — now you see it, and now you don't. 



178 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

Ingersoll — " Were the greatest men of all antiquity 
without this standard ?" 

Comment — Which standard? Do you refer to the 
true standard, or to some standard? These great men 
had a standard — the will of the gods. They thus recog- 
nized a very important truth ; namely, that the standard 
of morals should be a will superior to the human will. 
They erred in locating this superior or supreme will, but 
they recognized its necessity somewhere. In doing this 
these great men paid a magnificent tribute to the true 
God and to human reason. These men whose genius the 
world honors were too great to be atheists. They be- 
lieved in the existence of God, and failed only to identify 
him, or understand his nature. They honored the true 
God when by mistake they accepted a false one, as you 
would honor a genuine United States bond by accepting 
a counterfeit through ignorance. They had then a stan- 
dard of right and wrong, and although it was not the 
true one, yet they were consistent and held themselves 
amenable to it in their lives and in their logic. Their 
philosophy and theology began where yours end. It 
is your misfortune that you never studied them pro- 
foundly, as they deserve to be studied, for they were 
giants, these men of old. 

Ingersoll — " In the eyes of the intelligent men of 
Greece and Eome, were all deeds, whether good or evil, 
morally alike ?" 

Comment — No, sir. As we have seen, they had a stan- 
dard — the will of the gods — and therefore all deeds were 
not, in their eyes, morally alike. Their standard, not be- 
ing the true one, did not enable them to correctly dis- 
tinguish the right from the wrong, but it taught them 
that there was a right and a wrong. In this, their stan- 



INFINITE INTELLIGENCE. 179 

dard was superior to any you have advanced, for your 
denial of God destroys all difference between right and 
wrong and leaves the words crime and virtue without a 
meaning. These men of Greece and Rome were not so 
stupid as to believe your theory that consequences deter- 
mine the nature of actions. They never stole the truths, 
beauties and magnificent results of the Christian religion 
and tried to make believe they were the fruits of Pagan- 
ism, as modern infidels try to make it appear that those 
magnificent results are the fruits of reason and experi- 
ence. These intelligent men of Greece and Rome had 
their faults, but they were not given to that kind of lying. 

Ingersoll — " Is it necessary to believe in the exist- 
ence of an infinite intelligence before you have any 
standard of right and wrong ?" 

Comment — Yes. Deny the infinite intelligence, or 
God, and all deeds are morally alike ; there is no right, 
no wrong, and of course no distinction between them. 
Where there is no right or wrong there can be no stan- 
dard of right and wrong. Where there is no standard 
there cannot be any standard. It will not do to say that 
Christians admit a difference between right and wrong, 
for they do not admit it, if there is no God ; on the con- 
trary, they deny it. 

Ingersoll — " Is it possible that a being cannot be just 
and virtuous unless he believes in some being infinitely 
superior to himself ?" 

Comment — You have constructed this question very 
adroitly — to catch gudgeons. It is not necessary for 
every being to believe in some being infinitely superior to 
himself, but it is necessary for every created, finite being 
to so believe, in order to know what justice and virtue 
are and conform his life to them. 



180 NOTES ON INGERSOLL. 

Ingersoll-" If this doctrine be true, how can God be 
just and virtuous ?" 

Comment — Ah ! Precisely. This question supposes 
you caught a gudgeon. Is this play upon words worthy 
of the subject you are treating of? Is it worthy a phil- 
osopher whose motto is "honor bright" ? As our answer 
does not contain the doctrine you thought your prior ques- 
tion would necessarily elicit, your last question is simply 
ridiculous. God is just because he is Justice ; and justice 
and virtue are justice and virtue because he is, and with- 
out him there is neither justice nor virtue, nor anything 
else. I merely indicate here Christian principles ; to en- 
ter into a discussion of their metaphysical basis with you 
would be to degrade a magnificent science of which you 
manifest an ignorance which is only commensurate with 
your brazen egotism. 

Ingersoll — " Does he (God) believe in some being in- 
finitely superior to himself ?" 

Comment — It is not at all necessary. After the trick- 
ery of your other question has been exposed, there is not 
timber enough in this last one to fasten an answer to. 

Ingersoll — " If there is a God, infinite in power and 
wisdom, above him, poised in eternal calm, is the figure 
of justice." 

Comment — It is no pleasant task to reason with a man 
who talks in this way. The man who can talk only in 
this manner, has no idea whatever of God. He is too 
morally and intellectually blind to see that to plate an 
abstraction, called justice, above God, is to destroy God. 
Justice has no existence of its own. To exist, it must 
exist as a quality, or mode, or form, of something. Aside 
from that which is just, justice is a pure abstraction — a 
nonentity. This needs only to be said. And yet you 



FINITE AND INFINITE. 181 

would have us believe that a mode is superior to the real, 
without which modes are impossible. 

Ingeesoll — " There is uo world, no star, no heaven, 
no hell, in which gratitude is not a virtue, and where 
slavery is not a crime." 

Comment — Let us confine ourselves to this world. It 
is the only one you professedly know anything about. 
You have given a standard of right and wrong, to which 
I hold you. You say : " Consequences determine the 
quality of actions." As long as you hold yourself bound 
by this standard, your talk about virtue and crime is un- 
mitigated hypocrisy, for, until the consequences of acts 
are known, there is no difference whatever between virtue 
and crime. 

Ingeesoll — " I have insisted, and still insist, that it 
is impossible for a finite man to commit a crime deserving 
infinite punishment." 

Comment — A little more reason and a little less asser- 
tion would be more becoming in a philosopher. What 
you insist on here is correct, however, and no Christian 
ever thought of asserting the contrary. Finite man can 
no more experience infinite suffering than he can experi- 
ence infinite happiness, for between the finite and the in- 
finite there can be no equation. We have had occasion 
to call your attention to this patent fact before. You 
will no doubt be astonished to learn that what you insist 
on so vigorously is asserted with equal vigor by Christian 
philosophy. But you had a purpose and a meaning in 
your statement. You are arguing against everlasting- 
punishment ; and you began by stating a self-evident 
proposition. This being admitted, you proceed to juggle 
in another, and very different idea. Here is your argu- 
ment in short : Finite man cannot suffer infinite punish- 



182 NOTES OX INGERSOLL. 

ment ; therefore he cannot suffer everlasting punishment. 
Why do you confound these terms ? Was it through ig- 
norance or design ? If through ignorance, you are to be 
pitied ; if through design, you are not honest. Infinite 
and everlasting are not convertible terms. Man cannot, 
because he is finite, suffer infinite punishment ; but it 
does not follow, as you seem to think, that he cannot 
suffer everlasting punishment. With this distinction 
your whole argument on this point collapses like a 
punctured balloon. Happiness and misery are limited by 
the capacity of the receiver ; a finite receiver cannot re- 
ceive infinite happiness or punishment, but an everlasting 
receiver can receive everlasting happiness or misery. Man 
is everlasting, and therefore capable of everlasting happi- 
ness or punishment ; and all your " insisting" to the 
contrary is of no consequence. 

Ingersoll — " Of the supernatural we have no concep- 
tion." 

Comment — If you have no conception of it, how can 
you affirm or deny anything about it ? To admit that 
you have no conception of the supernatural after haying 
talked about it through thirty-five pages of the North 
American Review is to advertise yourself a thoughtless 
gabbler. A moment's reflection should show you that it 
is absolutely impossible to think or say anything whatever 
— even nonsense — about that of which you have no con- 
ception. That of which we have no conception is to us 
as that which is not, and that which is not, is not, and 
cannot be, the object of human thought or intelligence. 
It is not suprising then, under the circumstances, thai 
you have said many curious and wonderful things in your 
reply to Mr. Black. 

Ixgersoll — "Mr. Black takes the ground that if a 



A FALSIFIER. 183 

man believes in the creation of the universe * * he 
has no right to deny anything." 

Comment — This is mere trifling, and shows what an 
infidel philosopher is capable of when put to the stretch. 
There is not a word of truth in what you say, and you 
knew it when you said it. Mr. Black takes no such 
ground as you, in utter disregard of the obligations of 
veracity, attribute to him. 

Ingersoll — "We should remember * * that the 
early Christians believed everything but the truth, and 
that they accepted Paganism, admitted the reality of all 
the Pagan miracles." 

Comment — In making and printing this statement you 
lose all claim to respectful consideration. We must 
brand it in the whole and in all its parts as a falsehood ; 
and he who made it is ignorant or malicious, or both. 
And yet this falsifier talks glibly of "honesty" and 
" honor bright !" We charge Mr. Ingersoll with falsehood 
in making the above statement. We call on him to 
verify it, or stand as a convicted falsifier. A falsifier 
cannot be. trusted ; his glib talk of honesty and virtue 
must be looked upon as a snare, like that of the profli- 
gate who talks of virtue to his intended victim. We can 
respect an honest enemy, but when we find deceit and 
falsehood in his methods, we relegate him to that dis- 
reptuable class who afford remunerative employment to 
detectives and policemen. A falsifier is a manufacturer 
of base coin, a counterfeiter, a fraud. 

We here conclude these Notes, believing we have ac- 
complished what we undertook to do. We have said 
enough to convince our readers that Mr. Ingersoll is 
profligate of statement ; that he is not to be trusted ; 
that he is unscrupulous ; that as a logician and metaphy- 



184 NOTES OX IXGERSOLL. 



/ 



sician he is beneath contempt ; that he is a mere gal- 
vanizer of old objections long ago refuted ; that he is 
ignorant and superficial — full of gas and gush ; in a 
word, that he is a philosophical charlatan of the first 
water, who mistakes curious listeners for disciples, and 
applause for approval. 

Of course we do not expect him to reply to us, and for 
several reasons. First, he won't want to ; second, he 
can't ; third, he can pretend not to notice an obscure 
country minister. Very well. Then let some of his dis- 
ciples or admirers try to rehabilitate his smirched char- 
acter. We hold ourselves responsible to him, and to all 
the glib little whiffets of his shallow school. 



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